By Matt, submitted on Mon, 01/23/2012 - 1:00pm
Jan 31 2012 7:00 pm
7pm Tuesday January 31, 2012
Red Salmon Arts
presents
a discussion & book signing
with
Circe Sturm,
author of Becoming Indian:
The Struggle over Cherokee Identity in the Twentify-first Century
at
Resistencia Bookstore:
a liberated space for indepedent thinking, community building, and creative & revolutionary vision
casa de Red Salmon Arts
1801-A South First St., Austin, Tejaztlan: 512-416-8885
CHECK US OUT @ salmonrojo.tumblr.com
In Becoming Indian, Circe Sturm examines Cherokee identity politics and the phenomenon of racial shifting. Racial shifters, as described by Sturm, are people who have changed their racial self-identification from non-Indian to Indian on the US Census. Many racial shifters are people who, while looking for their roots, have recently discovered their Native American ancestry. Others have family stories of an Indian great-great-grandmother or -grandfather they have not been able to document. Still others have long known they were of Native American descent, including their tribal affiliation, but only recently have become interested in reclaiming this aspect of their family history. Despite their differences, racial shifters share a conviction that they have Indian blood when asserting claims of indigeneity. Becoming Indian explores the social and cultural values that lie behind this phenomenon and delves into the motivations of these Americans—from so many different walks of life—to reinscribe their autobiographies and find deep personal and collective meaning in reclaiming their Indianness.
Circe Sturm teaches at UT Austin, where she is an Associate Professor of Anthropology and co-Director of the Native American and Indigenous Studies program. She has spent most of her career working with American Indian people in the US. Her first book, Blood Politics: Race, Culture and Identity in the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma (California, 2002), explores issues of race, culture, nation and citizenship in Cherokee Country, particularly as they are expressed through the idiom of “blood.” Recently, Sturm has turned her attention to related debates about indigenous reclamation, tribal recognition and sovereignty.
