A PLACE TO RETHINK

Candice Hopkins CCS ’03, photo by Thatcher Keats

A $25 million endowment gift from the Gochman Family Foundation, combined with a $25 million matching commitment from George Soros and the Open Society Foundations as part of Bard College’s endowment drive, will accelerate the College’s work in Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS). To more fully reflect continental history and to place NAIS at the heart of curricular innovation and development, Bard’s American Studies Program has been renamed American and Indigenous Studies.

Kite (Suzanne Kite MFA ’18) (Oglala Sioux Tribe) Otakiya Thehpi Chapcheyazala (Black Currant Hide Manyfold), 2019 Silver thread on black leather, 42.5” × 35”

Photo by Joerg Lohse Gochman Family Collection

Plans include the establishment of a chair for a distinguished scholar of Native American and Indigenous studies, to be named after a prominent Indigenous woman in recognition of the academic contributions of Native women and educators; recruitment for additional faculty in interdisciplinary fields and Indigenous studies; and library acquisitions and the development of archives dedicated to Native American and Indigenous history and culture, which will amplify this work. This $50 million endowment makes possible College-wide programming initiatives, many in consultation with Forge Project Executive Director Candice Hopkins CCS ’03 (Carcross/Tagish First Nation). Forge Project, a Native-led initiative centered on Indigenous art, decolonial education, and supporting leaders in culture, food security, and land justice, was cofounded by Becky Gochman in 2021 to serve the social and cultural landscape of shared communities through a funded fellowship program for Indigenous culture workers, including those working in food and land justice, law and decolonial governance, and art.

Cannupa Hanska Luger (Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, Lakota) Drone video still from Mirror Shield Project, 2016 Mirror shields and drone video, dimensions variable. Edition 3/30, two artist’s proofs

Photo by Rory Wakemup, Oceti Sakowin camp, Standing Rock, North Dakota, 2016 Forge Project Collection, traditional lands of the Muh-he-con-ne-ok

Hopkins, who is curatorial director of the Toronto Biennial of Art and was on the curatorial team for the 2017 Documenta exhibition, in Kassel, Germany, has joined the CCS Bard faculty as fellow in Indigenous art history and curatorial studies. She will curate a major exhibition in 2023 to inaugurate the gift and will teach one course each year focused on themes related to Native and Indigenous art history and curatorial studies, employing the Forge’s collection of contemporary Native art, and engaging in conversations with working artists. Hopkins will lead archival acquisitions in Native and Indigenous exhibition histories to deepen CCS Bard’s efforts in this area, strengthen emphasis on Native and Indigenous curatorial histories and art, and offer greater support to Indigenous students. Brandi Norton (Native Alaskan from the Inupiaq Tribe) joins Bard as curator of public programs from the Center for Indigenous Studies, overseeing programming that will partner with and extend across Bard’s network.

Bard’s expanded commitment to American and Indigenous studies began with Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck, part of the Mellon Foundation’s Humanities for All Times initiative, steered by an interdisciplinary committee chaired by Christian Ayne Crouch, dean of graduate studies and associate professor of history and American and Indigenous studies. The Mellon grant offers three years of support for developing curriculum and projects, NAIS programming for the community, and efforts to support the work of emerging NAIS scholars and tribally enrolled artists at Bard. The principles and ideals of the grant flow from meaningful engagement with the College’s 2020 land acknowledgment (right).

The inaugural Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck conference, which took place October 20–22, 2022, “The DRE: Disturbance, Re-Animation, and Emergent Archives,” considered the topic of archives from a range of humanistic perspectives, with keynotes showcasing methods in Native American and Indigenous studies and African and AfricanAmerican studies.

Conference events included a screening and presentation by multimedia Tsitsistas/Suhtai Nation (aka Northern Cheyenne) artist Bently Spang, which opened the conference; a keynote lecture titled “Buried ‘Without Care’: Social Death, Discarded Lives, and the Transatlantic Slave Trade” by Marisa J. Fuentes, Presidential Term Chair in African American History and associate professor of history and women’s and gender studies at Rutgers University; a second keynote by Elizabeth N. Ellis, assistant professor of history at Princeton University and citizen of the Peoria Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma, “Recovering Indigenous Histories of Survival: Enduring Louisiana Nations”; and a closing talk by Oglála Lakh ˇ óta scholar and multimedia artist Kite (aka Suzanne Kite MFA ’18), “Makh ˇ óčheowápi Akézaptaŋ” (Fifteen Maps).

The Rethinking Place series emphasizes broad community-based knowledge, collaboration, and collectives of inquiry, and also attends to the importance of considering the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians, upon whose homelands Bard sits.

Land Acknowledgment for Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson

Developed in Cooperation with the Stockbridge-Munsee Community

In the spirit of truth and equity, it is with gratitude and humility that we acknowledge that we are gathered on the sacred homelands of the Munsee and Muhheaconneok people, who are the original stewards of the land. Today, due to forced removal, the community resides in Northeast Wisconsin and is known as the StockbridgeMunsee Community. We honor and pay respect to their ancestors past and present, as well as to future generations, and we recognize their continuing presence in their homelands. We understand that our acknowledgment requires those of us who are settlers to recognize our own place in and responsibilities toward addressing inequity, and that this ongoing and challenging work requires that we commit to real engagement with the Munsee and Mohican communities to build an inclusive and equitable space for all.