This Sawyer Seminar takes place on the ancestral and rightful homeland of the Chahta Yakni (Choctaw) and Chitimacha nations, two of many indigenous groups with historic ties to Bulbancha, or the place of many tongues, the Choctaw name by which the greater New Orleans area was known before settler colonialism and which is still used by some indigenous people living in the region today.
This statement acknowledges that colonialism is not a past event but an ongoing process of which we are part.
Federally recognised Native groups of Louisiana: The Chitimacha Tribe of Louisiana, The Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana, The Jena Band of Choctaw Indians, The Tunica-Biloxi Indian Tribe of Louisiana; Staterecognised Native groups of Louisiana: The Adai Caddo Tribe, The Biloxi-Chitimacha Confederation of Muskogee, The Choctaw-Apache Community of Ebarb, The Clifton Choctaw, The Four Winds Tribe , The Louisiana Cherokee Confederacy, The Grand Caillou/Dulac Band, The Isle de Jean Charles Band, The Louisiana Choctaw Tribe, The Pointe-Au-Chien Indian Tribe, The United Houma Nation.
This land is their land.
Although we use the term “post-colonial” here and throughout our website and series in order to signify the general orientation of this project as aligned with “Post-Colonial Studies” as a discipline, we simultaneously acknowledge the fraught status of this term as “colonialism” constitutes not an event that occurred in the past but a process that, from the perspective of many communities, continues.
Additionally, we acknowledge the slippery relationship between “history” and “memory” and, especially, the tendency to collapse these terms where sties of public memory are concerned. Although this seminar will endeavor to define these terms with some precision, exploring the inevitably messy inextricability of history and memory also inspires this project.