Afro-Indigeneity on the Way to a Post-Settler World

What does it mean to be Black and Indigenous? How does racialization specifically affect Afro-Indigenous people? How do the values of settler colonialism perpetuate violence against both Black and Indigenous people, and how can we adopt the values of indigeneity in order to move towards a post-settler world? In this panel discussion, Dr. Kyle T. Mays and Amber Starks will discuss these questions and more.

Dr. Kyle T Mays (Black/Saginaw Anishinaabe) is a transdisciplinary scholar and public intellectual of Indigenous studies, Afro-Indigenous studies, urban history, and Indigenous popular culture. He is an Assistant Professor in Africa American Studies at UCLA. He earned his Ph.D. in the Department of History at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign in 2015. At present, he is working on three books. The first is titled, Hip Hop Beats, Indigenous Rhymes: Modernity and Hip Hop in Indigenous North America (Forthcoming, June 2018, SUNY Press). This book explores how Indigenous Hip Hop artists challenge settler colonialism and construct modern, Indigenous identities through Hip Hop culture. The second book is titled, The Indigenous Motor City: Indigenous People and the Making of Modern Detroit (under contract with the University of Washington Press). This book examines how Indigenous people and representations of them were central to the development of Detroit, from the late 19th century the present. He is also co-editing an anthology titled, Decolonizing Hip Hop: Blackness and Indigeneity in Hip Hop Culture (under contract with Sense Publishers: Youth, Media, and Culture Series).

Amber Starks (aka Melanin Mvskoke) is an Afro Indigenous (African-American and Native American) activist, aspiring cultural critic/commentator, a student of decolonial theory, and budding abolitionist. She is an enrolled member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and is also of Shawnee, Yuchi, Quapaw, and Cherokee descent. Her passion is the intersection of Black and Native American identity. She seeks to normalize, affirm, and uplift the multidimensional identity in both the Black and Native communities through discourse and advocacy around anti-Blackness, abolishing blood quantum, Black liberation, and Indigenous sovereignty. Her activism encourages Black and Indigenous peoples to prioritize one another and divest from compartmentalizing struggles. She ultimately believes the partnerships between Black and Indigenous peoples (and all POC) will aid in the dismantling of anti-blackness, white supremacy, and settler colonialism, globally.

Register Here: https://myumi.ch/K4NMW