Notice Board

This research history has focused on the dynamic relationship between the political economy of capitalism and development with that of notions of indigenous identity, community, and tradition. The connection here is in how these
socioeconomic or material relationships translate into and reshape the ideas and praxis of the construction of the individual and collective indigenous self. This work emphasizes both the dimensions of historical and contemporary indigenous domination by settler colonial society as well as the marginalization of segments of indigenous populations by contemporary indigenous social formations. This involves new class formations within indigenous societies, the phenomenon of the non-recognized tribe in portions of the United States, indigenous community development beyond tribal government,
and splinter groups and alternative communities (to name a few). In particular, this presentation will center on his recent dissertation project on the Kanatsiohareke Mohawk Community and the National Saint Kateri Tekakwitha Shrine located spatially proximate to each other in the Mohawk valley region of Upstate New York. He analyzes two practices of indigenous themed and spirituality based community development that each utilize the nonprofit organizational form and different facets of a shared Mohawk history to produce different and alternative versions of Mohawk and indigenous traditionalism in their ancestral homelands. This is contextualized in the social, economic, and political history of the Mohawk communities along the Saint Lawrence river and how the different versions of Mohawk traditionalism represented at each site were formed from particular social fault lines and ruptures over the long history of the Mohawk people.