Conference: “Indigenous Environments: African and NDN Knowledge and Practices Compare

[Im The Truth]

Conference: “Indigenous Environments: African and North American Environmental Knowledge and Practices Compared”

The Africana Studies and Environmental Studies Programs at
Bowdoin College are pleased to be hosting a conference to
discuss indigenous environmental knowledge April 3-5, 2008.
The conference, “Indigenous Environments: African and North
American Environmental Knowledge and Practices Compared”
will bring twenty scholars of African and Native American
history and culture from across North America to campus to
explore pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial
relationships with the environment over time. Funding for
the conference has been provided by a generous grant from
the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Arun Agrawal of the University of Michigan will open the
conference with the keynote address “Indigenous Knowledge
and Power” on Thursday, April 3. The keynote address is open
to the public. We encourage interested faculty and students
to attend the conference.
By placing African and Native American local knowledge and
practices alongside one another, we hope that participants
might not only compare differences between period and place,
but also between different traditions of scholarship.
Specific topics will include land tenure and treaty rights,
health and food ways, religion, science and scientists,
identity and ethnicity, and natural resource management.
For more information about the conference, please visit the
web site:
http://www.bowdoin.edu/environmental...-program.shtml.

If you are interested in attending, please contact David
Gordon (dgordon@bowdoin.edu). While Bowdoin cannot offer any
financial support, we will make every effort to enable you
to participate in all the conference functions.
From the conference organizers,
Connie Y. Chiang, Assistant Professor of History and
Environmental Studies, Bowdoin College
David Gordon, Assistant Professor of History, Bowdoin
College
Matthew Klingle, Assistant Professor of History and
Environmental Studies, Bowdoin College
Lance Van Sittert, Mellon Global Scholar in Environmental
Studies and Associate Professor of Historical Studies,
University of Cape Town