Format: This is a virtual event that will take place via Zoom webinar. Open to the general public. Please register here: https://myumi.ch/9P6Xd

Description: Who gets to have futures? Who gets to imagine futures? Indigenous political activists and Indigenous studies scholars have turned these questions on their head. Indigenous peoples have too often been framed through the past. What would it mean to recognize their centrality to visions of futurity? Nowhere, perhaps, is this question more urgent than in the face of climate change and ecological disaster. Indigenous communities’ perspectives on sustainability offer critical methods and insights for thinking about our collective futures. This panel explores the contributions of Indigenous knowledge, Indigenous sciences, and Indigenous political thought to the making of just futures for Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples alike.

Panelists:
• Rebecca D. Hardin (Associate Professor, School of Environment and Sustainability, University of Michigan)
• Ana María León (Assistant Professor, History of Art, University of Michigan)
• David Myer Temin (Assistant Professor, Political Science, University of Michigan)
• Kyle Whyte (George Willis Pack Professor of Environment and Sustainability, University of Michigan)
• Mrinalini Sinha (moderator; Alice Freeman Palmer Professor of History, University of Michigan)

This event presented by the Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies. It is made possible in part by a generous contribution from Kenneth and Frances Aftel Eisenberg.

Image credit: Screen grab from Biidaaban: First Light (image from Media Kit; "Rooted in the realm of Indigenous futurism, Biidaaban: First Light is an interactive VR time-jump into a highly realistic—and radically different—Toronto of tomorrow.").