October 10-11, 2024
American Philosophical Society (APS)
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Coinciding with the 10th anniversary of the founding of the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research (CNAIR) at the APS’s Library & Museum, this hybrid conference will be an opportunity for people to gather together and share their experiences, insights, and visions for the future surrounding collaborative, community-engaged work in language and cultural revitalization, particularly the relationships between Indigenous knowledge and archives. 

Submission Deadline: May 31, 2024

The conference committee welcomes proposals for presentations from Indigenous and non-Indigenous participants throughout North America, Latin America, and beyond. They hope this event will facilitate a space to create new connections and reaffirm long-standing relationships and reflect upon what they can teach for cultivating newer ones, to give mutual encouragement and inspiration, and to spotlight emerging new initiatives and approaches.

For this hybrid conference, we welcome proposals for in-person or virtual presentations. This gathering is intended especially to highlight the work happening within and by Indigenous communities. We envision this conference being attended by members of Indigenous communities working in many capacities, museum and archives professionals, academic researchers, and anyone else with an interest in these topics.

Suggested topics include:

• Current work by Indigenous archives and cultural centers
• Language revitalization: Current work in teaching Indigenous languages, or the use of archives for language reclamation.
• Beyond paper: how Indigenous knowledge in archives is activated in everyday life, or how it relates to land, ethnobotany, art-making, material culture, law, and more.
• Reflections and relationships: conversations with former fellows or interns, or how archival materials impact relationships within communities, and beyond.
• Relational reciprocity in scholarship: what are some best practices, models of successful partnerships, or the place of archives in such work
• Projects that engage with collections at the APS

The committee welcomes a wide variety of creative and unique presentation styles such as:

• Group conversation or panel discussion
• Workshop, training, or class
• Talk story or show-and-tell
• Performance, reading, or art sharing
• Listening session
• Tour
• Presentation
• Community sharing
• Propose your own format! 

Anyone interested is encouraged to reach out to staff at CNAIR (cnair@amphilsoc.org) to discuss their idea for presenting.

Applicants should submit a title and a 250-word proposal related to these themes by May 31, 2024 via Interfolio: https://apply.interfolio.com/145175

Proposals will be accepted in English, Spanish, French, and Portuguese. Proposals in Indigenous languages are also welcome as long as a translation into one of the above languages is provided. Spanish interpretation will be offered for all of the conference sessions online.

Decisions will be announced in July. 

All in-person presenters will receive travel subsidies and hotel accommodations. Accepted presenters will be asked to prepare remarks appropriate for a broad range of audiences and for video streaming. Presenters who wish to create a scholarly journal-style version of their presentation will have the opportunity to publish such a version of their presentation in the APS’s Transactions. 

For more information contact CNAIR at cnair@amphilsoc.org.