Professor Dan Cobb will be speaking at an event celebrating the life and work of Makah documentary filmmaker Sandy Osawa at the University of Washington-Tacoma on Wednesday, October 28. On October 30, he will be giving a lecture based on his latest book, SAY WE ARE NATIONS (UNC Press, 2015), at the University of Washington-Seattle.
At the University of Washington-Seattle, Professor Cobb’s lecture will be “Say We Are Nations: The Promise and Perils of Talking the Language of the Larger World.” Drawing from his latest book, Say We Are Nations: Documents of Politics and Protest in Indigenous America since 1887, Professor Cobb will explore the words of Indigenous people who have shaped Native American rights movements from the late nineteenth century through the present day. Cobb will show how Native people have adopted a wide range of strategies in the struggle for Indigenous sovereignty, invoking “American” and global democratic ideas about citizenship, freedom, justice, consent of the governed, representation, and personal and civil liberties, while investing them with indigenized meanings. While these approaches have effectively addressed the aspirations of Indigenous nations and individuals within Canada, Hawaii, and Alaska, as well as the continental United States, by placing their concerns in national and international contexts, Cobb will challenge his audience to think through both the promise and potential pitfalls of this strategy. “Say We Are Nations” celebrates American Indian thought and political action since the late nineteenth century, offers new avenues for critical inquiry, and contemplates the unintended consequences of deploying a discursive strategy Standing Rock Sioux luminary Vine Deloria, Jr., referred to as “talking the language of the larger world.”