Notes and News

Call for Papers

Great Plains Quarterly is seeking essays for a new section of the journal devoted to raising important and even controversial questions related to scholarship and life on the Great Plains. These essays will undergo a limited peer- review process, and are not expected to include extensive citations. The purpose is to publish editorial essays, position papers, and other narratives that will contribute to the conversation about the Great Plains experience. For additional information, or to submit a paper for consideration, please contact the editor, Charles A. Braithwaite, at cbraithwaite2@unl.edu.

Fifty-Fourth Annual Conference of the Western History Association

The 2014 Western History Association conference will be held October 15–18 in Newport Beach, California. The theme will be The West and the World. The conference will consider the relationship between the West and the world. What forces have connected the North American West with other peoples? Consider, for example, the international links forged by catastrophic events: the fur and hide trade of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; the mining extravaganzas ranging from the California gold rush to the Klondike; the detonation of atomic and then hydrogen bombs; the end of the Cold War, which allowed indigenous Alaskans and Siberians to reestablish contact; the tsunami of 2011; and the climate change now known as global warming. All these events have reinforced ties between peoples of the West and their counterparts around the globe.

There is also an interest in drawing on vibrant comparative indigenous and borderlands scholarship that compares and contrasts the North American West with similar regions (other “Wests”) across the planet. As we gather in Newport Beach, California, on the eastern shore of the Pacific Rim, we are reminded that the West isn’t always geographically west, yet we also find ourselves asking, “What makes it a particular place? What sets it apart as a unique region?” Perhaps the answer to those questions lies in how the world’s peoples have perceived the West. Have the once romanticized impressions spun by Alfred Jacob Miller and, decades later, members of the Taos Society of Artists been overtaken by twenty- first-century features such as Starbucks, the City of Las Vegas, and Alaska’s Sarah Palin? In the early years of the second millennium, visitors to the West from Japan, China, and Europe might offer intriguing contemporary responses to resolve that conundrum. Have the earlier perceptions of the North American West changed or do they continue to prevail among outsiders who are intrigued by this unique region of the earth? Additional information about the 2014 conference can be found at http://www.westernhistoryassociation.wildapricot.org/, or by contacting Western History Association, Department of History, 605 Gruening, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks ak 99775-6460. E-mail contact: westernhistoryassociation@gmail.com.

Health and Indigenous Societies

The University of Minnesota is hosting Teaching Global Indigenous Issues through Film: Healthy Societies, July 7–10, 2014, at the Northern Lights Conference Center in Walker, Minnesota. The focus of this meeting is to reach educators who use Indigenous films in the classroom, and to share in the experiences of the makers of these moving images. There are four specific goals of the conference: to help participants develop a deeper historical perspective of Spanish, French, and British colonialism, its impact on peoplehood, and the necessity of decolonization in order to achieve a healthy society; to help participants to be exposed to the global contours and contexts of treaty rights, and to distinguish between issues of tribal sovereignty versus autonomy in several Indigenous cultures; and to help participants develop a deeper understanding of the media’s role in constructing Indigenous cultures; to help participants gain increased appreciation about how language is intrinsically tied to the culture of a people, and how the success of language revitalization programs, both locally and globally, increase the overall health and well- being of Indigenous societies. Participants will both receive and develop curricular resources in order to be more successful at integrating a global perspective of Indigenous identity into the classroom. The keynote speaker will be Shelley Niro. Ms. Niro is from the Mohawk Nation of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Confederacy) and is...