Ohio State offers lecture series on Ohio's Indians

The American Indian Studies Program at The Ohio State University announces its first lecture series—Native Ohio: Leaders and Landscape in the Cradle of American Indian Studies. The lectures are free and open to the public and will be held on four Wednesday evenings through May from 7-9 p.m.in 210 Main Library, 1858 Neil Avenue.

The first lecture, "Black Hawk and Keokuk: Intertribal Politics of Leadership," is Wednesday (2/8) and features Donald Fixico, a premier Native American scholar who is professor of history at Arizona State University. He previously was the founding director of the Center for Indigenous Nations Studies at the University of Kansas and Haskell Indian Junior College in Kansas. Fixico has published 60 plus articles and 7 books, including The American Indian Mind in a Linear World. His tribal affiliations are Sac and Fox, Creek, Seminole and Shawnee from Oklahoma. Ohio is the Shawnee homeland.

While at Ohio State, Fixico will meet with the American Indian Council and American Indian Student Services. He will also view the archives at the Ohio Historical Society and visit the Ohio State-Newark campus and the Indian Earthworks in the Newark area.

"This lecture series is a way to reclaim Ohio and its historical connection to native people," said Jay Miller, coordinator of the American Indian Studies Program. "Most people don't realize that Ohio was a hotbed for all Indian activity in the eastern United States and Canada in the 1600-1700's up until they were removed in 1830 by the federal government."

For more information, see http://americanindianstudies.osu.edu

Future lectures:
•April 12 with Joe Saunders, Louisiana Archaeological Survey
“Oldest Mounds in America? The Middle Archaic (+5,000 years old) Mound Sites of Northeast Louisiana"

•April 26 with Helen Hornbeck Tanner, Newberry Library
"Ohio Indian Country—The Intense Struggle of Ohio Indians to Retain Their Treaty-Guaranteed Land with the Sympathetic Support of Many Other Indian People"

•May 10 with Jason Jackson, Indiana University Department of Folklore
"The Art of Community Building among Woodland Indian People Today"