[AIW] CFP: Indigenous Shapes of Water [41st AIW], Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU), Munich/Germany, April 01-04, 2020

[AIW 41 Munich]

Call for Papers

41st American Indian Workshop

Indigenous Shapes of Water

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU), Munich/Germany

April 01—04, 2020

 <https://www.american-indian-workshop.org/>
https://www.american-indian-workshop.org/

 

(Deadline for papers & abstracts: January 05, 2020) 

 

The 41st edition of the American Indian Workshop 2020 invites proposals for
papers pertaining to the main theme “Indigenous Shapes of Water”, as well
for papers that document ongoing research efforts in indigenous North
America beyond the main topic of the conference.

 

With “Indigenous Shapes of Water” the 2020 AIW intends to take a holistic
look at the manifold manifestations of and relationships with water in
Indigenous life-worlds. In the context of deteriorating climates and
problematic climate policies, water is likely to evoke primarily
environmental studies discourses. The conference, however, is an invitation
to explore Indigenous shapes of water in the broadest sense: living with,
by, in, on the water, and being water in all its states. Besides the liquid
form we understand H2O as including vapour (as clouds, as a cooking agent,
as a cleansing agent in the sweat lodge) and ice (snow as building material,
ice floats as hunting grounds, glaciers as vital water sources, snow capped
mountaintops as landmarks).

 

Water was also chosen as a topic because is good to think with as it is
constantly in motion — be it as fast as falling raindrop or as slow as a
flowing glacier. Its fluidity is a reminder of how inevitable change is.
Change induces risk, a challenge human collectives have learnt to deal with
for millennia. Water has changed and shaped groups of humans, and,
increasingly, humans have been changing water and its flows. In the
collective historical experience of North American Aboriginal Peoples,
waterways and coastlines that once were flourishing, dynamic, intercultural
spaces, became entryways for settler colonialism and epidemics along with
the devastation of whole ecosystems. Undisputedly, globalized capitalism has
accelerated change to an unprecedented degree, disrupting the hitherto known
cycles of water. For Indigenous Peoples this poses the important question of
how and to what extent ancestral knowledge can help deal with abrupt changes
and shifting risks. Often referred to as traditional ecological knowledge
(TEK), these epistemologies have for a long time been superseded by a
somewhat authoritarian application of expert knowledge from the realm of
natural sciences. While more recently both camps have started to converge
and cooperate, a new threat has emerged: the denial and depreciation of any
verifiable knowledge whose validity is vested in collective practice, be it
community-generated or science-based.

 

As an example, the Dakota Access Pipeline has been pushed to completion,
even if common sense predicts that contaminated water does not stop at state
or reservation boundaries and in blatant disregard for American Indian
treaty rights as well as well-founded environmental concerns among many
actors. The partial defeat of the #NoDAPL resistance has demonstrated how
important it is to look at the political practices around water. Through
great advances in autonomy statutes Indigenous Peoples have been able to
wrench more and more control over their own affairs from nation state
administrations, though still within a colonial framework. Tribal
authorities have to deal with the challenge of accommodating diverse views
and practices around water in their territories. They may be aiming at
“sustainability” via market-based models, treating land and water as
“resources” to be “managed”, but that means they may operate in
contradiction to local ancestral knowledge and cosmovision. On the other
hand, issues as existential as safe drinking water or the destruction of
saltwater food sources through fish farms seem to require a certain degree
of bureaucratization and lobbying.

 

Changing water practices can precipitate in changing forms of community
organization and can affect how people relate to water and the land they are
part of. The individual and collective connections to water —in many
worldviews defined as sacred— are finally also a question of health,
spiritual well-being, personal integrity and intellectual growth, and
therefore crucial for viable futures in Indigenous communities.
Contributions to understanding the vastly diverse ways of dealing with
water-related challenges opens opportunities for indigenous peoples to learn
from each other and for all of us to learn from them.

 

The conveners look forward to meeting you at a gathering to re-think
landscapes as waterscapes —as diverse as the Mississippi Delta, the Great
Lakes, the Bering Sea or the Sonoran Desert— that are what they are because
Indigenous Peoples have shaped them and resiliently refuse to sever their
ties with them. All disciplines and approaches that share an interest in the
cultures of Indigenous North Americans are invited to explore the questions:
What does water do with people and what do people do with water on Turtle
Island? As always, we also invite reports and reflections of current
research projects with indigenous communities beyond the conference theme.

Potential topics for papers include, but are not limited to:

•                 What does water do with people and what do people do with
water from Indigenous perspectives?

•                 Manifestations of and relationships with water in
Indigenous life-worlds

•                 Indigenous landscapes as waterscapes

•                 Cycles of water, their management and their disruption
(dams, fish farms, pollution)

•                 Water and its states: ice, snow, permafrost, glacier,
rain, fog, clouds, vapor

•                 Presence, absence, and overabundance of water

•                 Indigenous waterways as means of communication,
transportation and intercultural spaces

•                 Water as saltwater, freshwater, and its gradients from
briny to brackish

•                 Coastlines and Waterways as entryways for colonialism
(1620–2020: 400 years of Plymouth Plantation)

•                 Tides and tidal waves as shapers of spaces and collective
memories

•                 Traditional ecological knowledge vs. expert knowledge vs.
anti-environmentalism

•                 Access to clean water: Water is Life, Waterwalkers,
#NoDAPL

•                 Water in Indigenous languages, oral tradition, mythology,
spirituality and philosophy

•                 Human-water-interaction in educational and museum
practices

•                 Water creatures as non-human collectives to interact with

•                 Water in Indigenous histories, literatures, art, film and
performance

and

•                 Current Research in general

Please submit proposals for papers (title & abstract of max. 500 words) 

by 

January 5, 2020 

to

aiw41 at american-indian-workshop.org
<mailto:aiw41 at american-indian-workshop.org>  

 

Acceptance notifications will be sent out by January 20, 2020.

 

For more information, please visit:
https://www.american-indian-workshop.org/

 

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***

41st American Indian Workshop, April 01 – 04, 2020

Indigenous Shapes of Water

Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Faculty for the Study of
Culture, Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich/Germany

***

42nd American Indian Workshop, 2021

Department of British and American Studies, European University Cyprus,
Nicosia/Cyprus

***

43 rd American Indian Workshop, 2022

Esch-sur-Alzette/Luxembourg

 

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