Four Talks on Indigenous Studies: Feb. 14, Sonya Atalay | Feb 21, David Heska Wanbli Weiden | Feb 28, Kyle Mays | March 6, Eli Nelson

Repossessing the Wilderness: New Deal Science at the Qualla Boundary in the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Nation 

Presented by Eli Nelson, Assistant Professor of American Studies at Williams College.

When Roosevelt launched his New Deal in 1932, the United States empire was reeling from a series of near fatal failures; economic depression, environmental devastation, and a profound existential crisis, all brought on by the reality that their “New World” was neither new nor world-sized. Even the federal government’s attempt to terminate the surviving Native polities across the continent through assimilation had failed. Native people were starving and beaten, traumatized even, but they were neither settler nor dead. When Indigenous nations were issued their own "Indian New Deal" by the administration later the same year, they were subject to a new kind of termination in the form of the science of conservation. The result was a homeland that had been transformed and sheltered, suspended somewhere between settler frontiers and Cherokee horizons. 

Part of a series of talks on interdisciplinary Indigenous scholarship from MIT SHASS.  Attend any or all of the presentations, and enjoy refreshments and conversation with the scholars after the talk.

MIT SHASS is committed to making this presentation accessible for all community members.  Please reach out to Tracie Jones-Barrett, jonestd@mit.edu, with accessibility requests.