Institute Speaker Series
The Institute for Human Science and Culture Speaker Series features Indigenous experts and scholars discussing the harmful historical collecting practices that brought ancestral belongings into museums and private collections; efforts to reconnect collection items to their communities of origin; and the reparative work of reclaiming communities’ cultural objects.
The Institute Speaker Series begins September 2024 with Dr. Meranda Roberts. All lectures will be held on Wednesdays at 6:00pm ET and livestreamed virtually.
The Institute Speaker Series is presented in partnership with Summit Metro Parks.
Upcoming Lectures
Dr. Meranda Roberts
"Entangled Histories: The Oak Native American Ethnographic Collection and Indigenous Reclamation"
Wednesday, September 11, 6:00 PM ET
Online Event - Registration Required
About the Event
Join Dr. Meranda Roberts (Northern Paiute/Chicana) in discussing the colonial history of collecting and exhibiting Native American cultural items in academic spaces, such as the Oak Native American Gallery in the Institute for Human Science and Culture. Additionally, learn what it takes for Native communities to reunite and reclaim their cultural items from such institutions.
About the Speaker
Dr. Meranda Roberts is a citizen of the Yerington Paiute Tribe and Chicana. She has a Ph.D. in Native American History and an M.A. in Public History from the University of California, Riverside. Meranda has worked as a co-curator at the Field Museum of Natural History, where she developed brand new content for the museum’s Native American exhibition hall, "Native Truths: Our Stories. Our Voices." She curated the 2023 Native American Invitational Exhibition at Idyllwild Arts titled "Still We Smile: Humor as Correction and Joy" and is currently guest curating the exhibition "Continuity: Cahuilla Basket Weavers and their Legacies," which will open at the Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College in Winter 2024. Meranda is also a visiting professor at Pomona College in the art history department.
Meranda’s passion lies in holding colonial institutions, like museums, accountable for the harmful narratives they have created about Indigenous people. She is dedicated to reconnecting Indigenous collection items with their descendants and telling these items’ stories in a way that adequately expresses their meaning to the communities they come from. Using Indigenous methodologies and anti-colonial pedagogy, Meranda’s work exemplifies ways in which we can work toward a more equitable future.
Courtney Little Axe
"Transcending NAGPRA: Indigenizing Collections Care and Repatriation"
Wednesday, December 4, 6:00 PM ET
Online Event - Registration Required.
About the Event
The University of Montana Anthropological Curation Facility (UMACF) has been working in collaboration with the Tribal Historic Preservation Officers from each Montana tribe to formulate policies and procedures in accordance with cultural protocols for repatriation. The University of Montana's NAGPRA Repatriation Coordinator will discuss what Indigenizing collections care means and what successful collaboration between institutions and tribes could look like.
About the Speaker
Courtney Little Axe is Northern Cheyenne, Absentee Shawnee, and Seminole. She grew up on the Northern Cheyenne reservation and in Little Axe/Tecumseh, Oklahoma. She has an AS in Natural Sciences and a Records and Information Management Certificate from Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas. She also has a BA in Anthropology and a Forensic Studies Certificate from the University of Montana (UM). During her undergrad, Courtney worked as an intern in the UM Anthropological Curation Facility for two years. Following her time at UM, she was selected as a Native American fellow at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts and worked on NAGPRA report preparation, researching tribal communities, and bringing an Indigenous perspective to museum exhibitions. She also worked for the Autry Museum of the American West in Los Angeles, California for three years assisting the NAGPRA Coordinator there. She is now the Repatriation Coordinator and Collections Manager at the University of Montana (UM). Her skill set helped create procedures to work with numerous tribes across the country to assist with cultural protocols for handling and care of cultural materials. She has dedicated much of her adult life to repatriation and Indigenizing heritage collection care with hope that her work will help rebuild the framework for what repatriation and collections care could look like.
Dr. Paul Edward Montgomery Ramírez
"Unsettling Museums & Re-Storying Indigeneities"
Wednesday, January 22, 6:00 PM ET
Online Event - Registration will open soon.
About the Speaker
Dr. Montgomery Ramírez is a Monimboseño person from what is currently Nicaragua, raised in diaspora in the United States. He is a decolonial heritage specialist and Indigenous public archaeologist, with a PhD in Archaeology and Cultural Heritage from the University of York. His research focuses on re-storying narratives of the past and using cultural heritage for decolonial options for sustainable and equitable futures for Indigenous and marginalized communities. In 2017, he received the Orgullo de Mi Pais Award from the Nicaraguan Embassy in London for his outreach work on Indigenous rights and heritages. Dr. Montgomery Ramírez is a public speaker and activist for education, environmental, cultural, and human rights.