April 14, 2009
Clark to host talk on sexual violence and American Indian Genocide
Andrea Lee Smith will present "Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide" at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, April 22, in the Rose Library of the Cohen-Lasry House, 11 Hawthorne Street, Worcester. The talk is offered as part of Clark University's Difficult Dialogues Spring 2009 Symposium "Where Do We Go from Here? Race in the Era of Obama."
By beginning with the impact of the abuses inflicted on Native American children at state-sanctioned boarding schools from the 1880s to the 1980s, Smith expands conceptions of violence to include environmental racism, population control and the widespread appropriation of Indian cultural practices by whites and other non-natives. She connects these and other examples of historical and contemporary colonialism to the high rates of violence against Native American women—the most likely women in the United States to die of poverty-related illnesses, be victims of rape and suffer partner abuse.
Smith places Native American women at the center of her analysis of sexual violence, challenging both conventional definitions of the term and conventional responses to the problem.
Smith is a professor of American Culture and Women's Studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She co-founded INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence in 2000, and she plays a prominent role in its National Planning Committee. INCITE! is a national grassroots organization that engages in direct action and critical dialogue to end violence against women of color and their communities. She has worked with Amnesty International as a Bunche Fellow, coordinating the research project on sexual violence and American Indian women. In 2005, Smith was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize "as a woman who works daily for peace" in recognition of her research and work regarding violence against women of color in the U.S.
This event is free and open to the public. It is offered as part of the Modern History Colloquium and is cosponsored by the Strassler Family Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and the Higgins School of Humanities. For more information, call 508-793-7479 or visit www.clarku.edu/difficultdialogues.
Launched with a grant from the Ford Foundation and cosponsored by the Higgins School of Humanities, The International Development, Community and Environment Department and the Graduate School of Management, the Difficult Dialogues program works to encourage a culture of dialogue at Clark by: building skills of dialogue among faculty, staff and students; by creating opportunities for the community to engage in dialogue around significant issues common to us all; and by integrating dialogue into academic courses and student life initiatives throughout the university.