Earthworks

March 1st, 2023 | 4 p.m.

Free and open to the public.

This event is hybrid, it will be held in person in the Reese Center, Room 225, and on Zoom. 

We strive to host inclusive, accessible events that enable all individuals, including individuals with disabilities, to engage fully. To request an accommodation or for inquiries about accessibility, please contact Shannon Donley at donley.82@odu.edu . At least two weeks' advance notice will help us to provide seamless access.

Professor Kenneth Madsen from the Department of Geography will give a Faculty Talk Outside the Box on “Waiving Laws to Enforce Laws: The Case of U.S. Border Wall Construction.” 

To expedite the construction of barriers along the border with Mexico, U.S. Secretaries of Homeland Security have waived an extensive array of laws since 2005 when authority for such actions was first delegated to that position as part of the REAL ID Act.  This presentation contextualizes the political origins of what is referred to as Section 102(c) waiver authority, shows how these waivers are used to dramatically expand border barrier construction, and reviews legal challenges.  In doing so, it connects the use of waivers in governance as viewed through the study of law with the theoretical prominence of states of exception in the discipline of geography.  By examining the specific ways in which these legal practices and their geographic expression have institutionalized a state of exception that pushes the boundary of legal acceptability, we arrive at a more transdisciplinary understanding of the role of states of exception as a tool of governance. 

During Faculty Talks Outside the Box, Ohio State Newark professors discuss recent research in their fields as it relates to our community and answer questions. 

The Ohio State University at Newark offers an academic environment that is inclusive of diversity, challenging but supportive with world-renowned professors and access to Ohio State’s more than 200 majors. It’s where learning comes to life. Research, study abroad and service learning opportunities prepare students for their careers in ways they never expected.

For more information visit newark.osu.edu 1179 University Drive Newark Ohio 43055

February 23, 2023 | 7 p.m. EST

Free and open to the public.

The Newark Earthworks Center is hosting Dr. Jean M. O’Brien (White Earth Ojibwe Nation), University of Minnesota, who will present on "Monumental Mobility: The Memory Work of Massasoit." on Zoom at 7 p.m. EST.

This talk takes up the work of Indigenous intellectuals to reconfigure narratives of national origins in connection with the symbolism surrounding the Massasoit monument installed on Cole’s Hill in Plymouth in 1921 to mark the 300thanniversary of the landing of the English. Such Indigenous engagements suggest the rich potential of Indigenous public historians to intervene in sanitized national narratives of origins. Can the statue prompt viewers to reckon with of the structural violence of settler colonialism in commemorative landscapes, or does it further entrench celebratory narratives of national origins?

7:00 – 8:00 p.m. EST
Carmen Zoom, Registration Required.

We strive to host inclusive, accessible events that enable all individuals, including individuals with disabilities, to engage fully. To request an accommodation or for inquiries about accessibility, please contact Dr. John Low at 740-755-7857 or low.89@osu.edu . At least two weeks' advance notice will help us to provide seamless access.

There will be 15 minutes for a Question and Answer session at the end of the webinar. Please submit your questions in the chat.

Jean M. O’Brien (Citizen of the White Earth Ojibwe Nation) is Distinguished McKnight University Professor and Northrop Professor at the University of Minnesota. She is a co-founder past president of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association. In addition to numerous articles and book chapters, O’Brien has published six books on Indigenous history. Most recently, she published a co-edited volume(with Daniel Heath Justice), Allotment Stories: Narrating Indigenous Land Relations under Settler Siege, (University of Minnesota Press). She is an elected member of the Society of American Historians and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Speaker series as part of Indigenous Ohio: OSU and Native Arts and Humanities Past and Present grant. Funded by the Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme.

Kind thanks to Jared Gardner Department of English and Director of Popular Culture Studies for assisting in set up and hosting this web presentation.

November 10, 2022

7 p.m. EST

Free and open to the public.

The Newark Earthworks Center is hosting Dr. Matthew Fletcher (Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians), University of Michigan, who will present "Muskrat versus Canary: The Future of Federal Indian Law" on Zoom at 7 p.m. EST.

 Federal Indian law and policy is marked by dramatic confrontations between paradigms described metaphorically, such as George Washington's "Savage as the Wolf" policy or Felix Cohen's "Miner's Canary" parable. These metaphors reflect that reality that federal Indian law and policy was imposed on tribal nations, usually without their consent or consultation. Even today, five decades after the beginning of the tribal self-determination era, the Miner's Canary parable remains the most-used shorthand metaphorical shorthand to describe Indigenous affairs in the United States But in my view, those metaphors are no longer useful to describe tribal nations. Tribal nations now possess agency and, occasionally, significant political and economic power. Congress and the Executive branch have largely embraced and enabled tribal self-determination. The United States Supreme Court has not. Or has it? Tribal nations have fared better in the Supreme Court since 2014 than in any other period of American history. Even so, the Court is paradigmatically split. In my scholarship, I have adopted the Anishinaabe creation story about the lowly, but heroic, Muskrat as my metaphor to describe modern tribal nations. The Supreme Court is poised to either accept and enable the new paradigm of tribal self-determination or eradicate it in favor of keeping tribal nations weak and passive. It is a paradigmatic battle of the Muskrat versus the Canary.

7:00 – 8:00 p.m. EST
Carmen Zoom, Registration Required.

We strive to host inclusive, accessible events that enable all individuals, including individuals with disabilities, to engage fully. To request an accommodation or for inquiries about accessibility, please contact Dr. John Low at 740-755-7857 or low.89@osu.edu . At least two weeks' advance notice will help us to provide seamless access.

There will be 15 minutes for a Question and Answer session at the end of the webinar. Please submit your questions in the chat.

Matthew L.M. Fletcher (Grand Traverse Band citizen), is the Harry Burns Hutchins Collegiate Professor of Law at Michigan Law. He teaches and writes in the areas of federal Indian law, American Indian tribal law, Anishinaabe legal and political philosophy, constitutional law, federal courts, and legal ethics, and he sits as the Chief Justice of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians and the Poarch Band of Creek Indians.

Professor Fletcher also sits as an appellate judge for the Cabazon Band of Mission Indians, the Colorado River Indian Tribes, the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, the Hoopa Valley Tribe, the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, the Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band of Pottawatomi Indians, the Nottawaseppi Huron Band of Potawatomi Indians, the Rincon Band of Luiseño Indians, the Santee Sioux Tribe of Nebraska, and the Tulalip Tribes. 

Speaker series as part of Indigenous Ohio: OSU and Native Arts and Humanities Past and Present grant.  Sponsored by the Newark Earthworks Center and the Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme. 

Kind thanks to Jared Gardner Department of English and Director of Popular Culture Studies for assisting in set up and hosting this web presentation.

November 16, 2022

12:30 - 1:30 EST Hopkins Hall 358, Columbus

2 - 3 p.m. EST Barnett Center Collaboratory, 141 Sullivant Hall, Columbus

Free and open to the public.

The Ancient Indigenous Monuments and Modern Indigenous Arts Project presents: Visiting Artist Residency Presentation and Conversation with Frank Buffalo Hyde (Onondaga) for an artist presentation about how his work challenges Native American stereotypes through tapping into the collective unconsciousness of the 21^st Century. Drawing images from advertisement, movies, television, music and politics, Buffalo Hyde's expresses observation, as well as knowledge through experience, developing overlapping imagery to mimic the way the mind holds information in a non-linear way. 

The presentation will be followed by a conversation with Buffalo Hyde as part of Our Unlearning Hour: Mask Dialogues.

Funded by the Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme and presented in collaboration with the Newark Earthworks Center and the Department of Art.

November 17, 2022

7 p.m. EST

Free and open to the public.

The Newark Earthworks Center is hosting Dr. Doug Kiel, Northwestern University, who will present "#LandBack: Histories of Restoring Indigenous Presence" on Zoom at 7 p.m. EST.

Land is at the heart of Indigenous identities, and histories of U.S. colonialism are largely defined by attempts to separate Native people from their collective inheritance. Native communities have reacquired territory through a variety of means in recent years, which has often been met with resentful opposition at the local level. The Land Back movement is nonetheless gaining steam, accruing victories and making a better world. This present-day movement has roots that reach deep into the past, and has high stakes for the future.

7:00 – 8:00 p.m. EST

Carmen Zoom, Registration required.

We strive to host inclusive, accessible events that enable all individuals, including individuals with disabilities, to engage fully. To request an accommodation or for inquiries about accessibility, please contact Dr. John Low at 740-755-7857 or low.89@osu.edu . At least two weeks' advance notice will help us to provide seamless access.

There will be 15 minutes for a Question and Answer session at the end of the webinar. Please submit your questions in the chat.

Dr. Doug Kiel (PhD., University of Wisconsin–Madison, 2012) is a citizen of the Oneida Nation and studies Native American history, with particular interests in the Great Lakes region and twentieth century Indigenous nation rebuilding. He is working on a book manuscript entitled Unsettling Territory: Oneida Indian Resurgence and Anti-Sovereignty Backlash. The Oneida Nation of Wisconsin, a community that had been dispossessed of their New York homelands in the early nineteenth century, yet again suffered devastating land losses as a result of the Dawes Act of 1887—a policy that President Theodore Roosevelt once called “a mighty pulverizing engine to break up the tribal mass.” Kiel’s book examines how the Oneida Nation’s leaders strengthened the community’s capacity to shape their own future by envisioning, deliberating and enacting a dramatic reversal of fortune during the twentieth century. His book also examines the origins of recent litigation between the Oneida Nation and the Village of Hobart, a mostly non-Native municipality that is located within the boundaries of the Oneida Reservation and seeks to block the tribe from recovering land that was lost a century ago. 

Speaker series as part of Indigenous Ohio: OSU and Native Arts and Humanities Past and Present grant.  Sponsored by the Newark Earthworks Center and the Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme. 

Kind thanks to Jared Gardner Department of English and Director of Popular Culture Studies for assisting in set up and hosting this web presentation.

Past April 10 and 11, 2022, July 25, October 16, 2022

At 2 p.m. Director of the Newark Earthworks Center Dr. John Low will be giving a guided tour

Contact the Ohio History Connection [external link] for more information.

The site will be open daylight to dusk. The Octagon State Memorial [external link] is one of the most spectacular surviving remnants of the Newark Earthworks. The Octagon is connected to a perfectly circular enclosure 1,054 feet in diameter. The architecture of the Octagon Earthworks encodes a sophisticated understanding of geometry and astronomy. It is a National Historical Landmark and is on track to become a World Heritage site! Portions of the Octagon Earthworks is open to the public during daylight hours 365 days a year, but much of the site is used as a private golf course for most of the year, so access is restricted. Four times each year, however, golfing is suspended and the entire site is made available to the general public.

October 13-14, 2022

9:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. EST

Locations: OSU Thompson Library (Day 1) and the STEAM Factory (Day 2)

If you are interested in the cultural contexts of local food systems and exploring cross-cultural, community-partnered fieldwork, this workshop is for you! The workshop will take place over the course of two days and will be an opportunity for participants to deepen their understanding, form partnerships, and begin taking action right away. We will explore how the assets local communities bring to these projects can transform research. Speakers will share examples of what working towards food sovereignty can look like in diverse local/global contexts, including the U.S. and Yemen. We will look at a variety of practices and contexts for cross-cultural interdisciplinary partnerships. 

You can check out the program here. 

Globally, 27% of people faced moderate or severe food insecurity in 2019, representing more than 2 billion people. Community-Centered Approaches for Food Systems Transformation will be framed around the question: “How we might reprioritize research and teaching based on community partnership rather than "expertise?” In other words, how might learning from communities take precedence over learning about them. The workshop will focus on the cultural contexts of local food systems and will look at cases in the U.S., the Middle East, and other regions.

We will examine a variety of practices, including historic food production, projects in urban areas, and others. Food security is especially urgent for indigenous communities worldwide, many of whom continue to bear the burdens of displacement from their native lands. For example, 1 in 4 Native Americans in the U.S. is food insecure (Stanger-McLaughlin et al., 2021).

The purpose of the workshop is to shed light on research and grassroots projects that address this urgent crisis, highlighting the work currently being done by communities around the world to produce nutrition-dense, culturally relevant cuisine. Headlining the workshop is Dr. Brandy Phipps, Research Assistant Professor of Food, Nutrition and Health – Agriculture Research Development Program, Central State University who will serve as the keynote speaker, focusing on the SUSHI food sovereignty project she is leading in partnership with the Menominee Tribal College of Wisconsin. Dr. Phipps is an inspiring model of leadership. Learn more about her work in this short video.

Dr. Phipps' keynote will be followed by a conversation between experienced researchers doing work in community food systems in the U.S., Belize, and Yemen, and moderated by an expert in community food security. They will shed light on research and grassroots projects that address this urgent crisis, highlighting the work currently being done by communities around the world to produce nutrient-dense, culturally relevant cuisine.

Speakers bios:

Brandy Phipps
Research Assistant Professor of Food, Nutrition and Health – Agriculture Research Development Program, Central State University
Dr. Phipps is an Assistant Professor with a research focus on a) the intersection of climate change, nutrition/health equity, and food systems transformation; and b) holistic interactions of biomolecules in plant extracts and foods and the mechanisms of biomolecules in the prevention/alleviation of disease. Dr. Phipps is Project Director on a $10 M USDA-funded project and Co-Pi on $1.5 M in additional USDA- and FDA-funded projects. She has 20+ years of higher education teaching experience in the Biological and Life Sciences, and currently teaches Anatomy and Physiology, Nutrition and Undergraduate Research classes. She is particularly passionate about providing educational equity, advanced experiential STEM learning opportunities, and personalized mentoring to PEER students and those who have been socially and economically disadvantaged. Dr. Phipps is an inspiring model of leadership. Her current work includes leading a transdisciplinary team focused on food systems transformation which includes significant work to support food sovereignty efforts of the Menominee Nation. Learn more about her work in this short video.

Brian Kowalkowski
Dean, Department of Continuing Education
College of Menominee Nation
Brian Kowalkowski started at College of Menominee Nation in 2007 as Assistant Director of Education Outreach Extension. Prior to that he worked for the Menominee Tribal Government for nine years, first as a land use planner and then as a community resource planner. His current position as Dean of Continuing Education requires him to manage and administer all grants and contracts of the department and act as the Extension Director. He analyzes community data to determine appropriate activities to be undertaken by the department. He also works with different community agencies to establish cooperative working relationships. A major accomplishment has been the creation of a local farmers market on the Menominee Reservation that has coincided with the improvement of access to fresh foods. He is involved with numerous local, state and federal professional organizations, representing his college and 1994 Tribal Land Grant schools.

Daniel Varisco
President, American Institute for Yemeni Studies
Anthropologist, Historian
Dr. Daniel M. Varisco will discuss what local food systems can look like in the context of Yemen. Dr. Varisco is an anthropologist with field research and extensive experience in Yemen regarding traditional agricultural systems and their intersection with policy and politics. He is also a historian and Arabist who has edited and translated mediaeval Rasulid agricultural texts and other Arab scholarship. He is experienced as a consultant to the World Bank (conservation and food security) and USAID. He will draw on his experience with community involvement in development projects and the successes of grassroots efforts. Besides Yemen, he has conducted research in Egypt, Qatar and the UAE. https://ias.academia.edu/DanielVarisco

Kareem M. Usher, PhD.
Assistant Professor
College of Engineering / Austin E. Knowlton School of Architecture City and Regional Planning Section
Dr. Kareem M. Usher is an Assistant Professor of City and Regional Planning at the Knowlton School of Architecture. His academic identity can be described as a public scholar who strives to create a peaceful, just and loving world by reducing human suffering through community-engaged planning research - the co-production of knowledge between community members and faculty, with the site of inquiry being food systems at the neighborhood scale. Dr. Usher’s research focuses on urban food systems and he engages this topic at the intersection of food access, social justice, regional governance and community economic development. Methodologically, his work incorporates compassion as a planning approach and ‘action research’ or community-engaged scholarship. By working with communities on food systems in real places and in real-time, he has developed a body of empirical work that provides the foundation for an emergent research program at the intersections of community development, theory and praxis. His work has spanned geographies: rural-suburban-urban, Global South-Global North, Mid-western-Southern United States; cultures and socio-economic groups: African American, Appalachian, Non-Hispanic European, and Indigenous Peoples: Belizean ethnic groups – Kriol, Garifuna and Maya (Q’echi). Acknowledging that there remains much to know and understand in order to address ‘wicked’ social problems and effect sustainable change, Dr. Usher employs compassionate community engagement to uncover and lift up new ways of knowing – new epistemologies co-created with citizens who are the experts in their communities.

Moderator:

Mary Rodriguez
Associate Professor
Department of Agricultural Communication, Education and Leadership

The workshop will take place over the course of two days and will be an opportunity for participants to deepen their understanding, form partnerships, and begin taking action right away. The conversations from day 1 will continue on day 2, which is geared towards turning all of this information and discussion into new activities by facilitating new collaborations. Some outcomes we might achieve by 3:00 on Friday include: new course development, teams formed around aspects of current programs, new grant/funded project proposal teams formed, institutional pathways for more equitable research, and whatever the assets and creativity each person brings to the table can achieve. To continue the discussion after the workshop, we are partnering with Columbus’ Growing and Growth Collective on a film series focused on food sovereignty projects locally and around the world.

Scientists, economists, historians, public health experts, etc., are welcome! We will consider how food systems, eco-systems, cultures and economies are mutually sustaining. Speakers from communities in the U.S., the Middle East, and other parts of the world will share their work in food sovereignty and what it means, both in its local context and implications for the rest of the world. Topics for discussion will follow this framework: Achieving nutrient density and health outcomes through food sovereignty projects while addressing historic inequities.
Sustaining culturally relevant food sovereignty through effective collaboration, ethical knowledge sharing and education.
What makes successful cross-cultural partnerships and the best results in terms of knowledge, prosperity and health outcomes.

The speakers will discuss what food sovereignty means to their cultural heritage and the role cross-cultural partnerships may play. We will therefore be looking at examples of both cross-cultural community building and transdisciplinary collaboration. We will follow up the workshop with action steps such as grant writing, educational activities and support for food sovereignty work locally and in other parts of the world. 

A Multi-unit Collaboration!

This food sovereignty workshop is brought to you by a partnership between University Libraries, the Global Water Institute, and the Middle East Studies Center. Our partnership with the Growing and Growth Collective supports this workshop and the film series on Food Sovereignty we will be co-hosting (More details coming!). 

Many thanks to our co-sponsors without whom this event would not have been possible. They include:

• The Newark Earthworks Center 
  •  with support from a Indigenous Arts and Humanities Grant by the Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme,
• CFAES AgroEcosystems Management Program (AMP),
• The Department of Food, Agricultural and Biological Engineering,
• The STEAM Factory,
• The Department of Anthropology,
• The Department of Comparative Studies,
• The Center for Latin American Studies, and
• The CFAES Rattan Lal Center for the Study of Carbon Management and Sequestration (C-MASC). 

October 10, 2022

4 p.m. EST

Free and Open to the Public.

Celebrate Indigenous Peoples' Day with us!!!

Bricker Hall Lobby

190 North Oval Mall | Columbus, OH 43210

Potawatomi basket making is a reclamation and recovery of a powerful piece of native knowledge and technology and represents a potent counter-colonial and counter-hegemonic act with lasting implications. This exhibit reflects an understanding that objects are not lifeless things that occupy space. They have spirit and meaning. Centered upon intellectual and material property, basket weaving is an opportunity for Native women and men to make their own histories by using the past to "read the present.

This exhibit is curated by Director of the Newark Earthworks Center John N. Low, PhD, associate professor in Comparative Studies at The Ohio State University and enrolled citizen of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi.

Sponsored by The Newark Earthworks Center with support from an Indigenous Arts and Humanities Grant by the Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme.

September 12, 2022

Chris Booker, Ohio State News

Ohio State University President Kristina M. Johnson recently joined Ohio State Newark Dean William MacDonald for the presentation of a hand-crafted black ash basket made by noted Pokagon Potawatomi artist Jenny (Brown) Chapman.

John Low, associate professor in comparative studies at the Newark campus, shared the artwork with the university to celebrate Ohio State’s role in expanding educational opportunities for Native students, staff and faculty. Low teaches history, American Indian studies and religious studies. He is also an enrolled member of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians.

“Native cultures played a significant role in the history of this country, yet their existence has been threatened by systemic and long-standing prejudices, mistreatment and environmental degradation. The preservation of traditions like the weaving of black ash baskets, which came so close to being lost forever, is critical to maintaining the proud heritage of the Pokagon Potawatomi people,” Johnson said after receiving the gifts. “I was honored to recently receive a basket and felt the weight of its importance dating back generations. We must do everything we can to ensure the Pokagon can continue to engage in this beautiful and sacred craft.”

The black ash baskets are an important part of Pokagon Potawatomi culture. Low said while the baskets are considered artwork and are often displayed in museums, they are meant to be handled and used.

“The baskets are alive. They have a spirit. They like to be touched. They don’t want to feel cotton gloves. They want human beings,” Low said. “They’re art, of course, but they also have a function. They carry things. They also carry ideas and hopes.”

Over the past century, the practice of basket weaving has been threatened – first by the enforcement of government regulations that contributed to loss of land and resources, and now by the ecological threat presented by the emerald ash borer beetle.

In the 1970s, skilled artisans founded the Pokagon Basket Makers’ Co-op to revive and carry on the art of basketry, which continues to thrive today.

“Women created the co-op and revived the whole renaissance of the basket making process and the art form. It really revived the spirit and the heart of the community,” Low said. “By 1994, we had our federal sovereignty, our federal recognition restored to us, so it’s a really wonderful story. It means a lot to me, too, because my grandmother was a basket maker.”

The Potawatomi continue to work for the survival of the black ash tree, treating trees on tribal lands with organic pesticides and collecting seeds that may be replanted in the future. 

Low’s collection of black ash baskets is currently on display at the Field Museum in Chicago until October. “Pokagon Potawatomi Black Ash Baskets: Our Storytellers” allows patrons to listen to the stories of the baskets as well as the Pokagon people’s story of tradition and resilience.

At President Johnson's suggestion, details are being completed to exhibit the baskets again on the Columbus campus after the close of the exhibit in Chicago.

Opening April 16, 2021- September 2022.

The Field Museum

1400 S Lake Shore Drive,

Chicago, IL 60605

Opens to the public in the Maran Gallery near the Maori House.

"This exhibition celebrates these baskets and their makers. It tells a story of survival and resilience. But it also contains a cautionary tale and a warning of environmental catastrophe as the emerald ash borer, an invasive beetle from Asia, decimates black ash populations in North America. What will the Pokagon Potawatomi make their iconic baskets out of if all the black ash trees are gone? That is a question that concerns us all." -Dr. John N. Low, Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Co-Curator and Basket Caretaker.

• Field Museum [external link]
• "New exhibit featuring Pokagon Potawatomi basket making to open at the Field Museum" [external link]
  • Dr. John N. Low, LinkedIn, April 5, 2021.
• "Pokagon Potawatomi Black Ash Baskets: Our Storytellers opens to the public April 16, 2021 in the Maran Gallery near the Maori House" [external link]
  • Dr. John Low, Pokegnek Yathdanawa issuu, June 2021, Page 5.
• Pokagon Black Ash Baskets Facebook Live [external link] | The Field Museum
  • Dr. John Low [Pokagon Band of Potawatomi] and Monisa Ahmed, May 26, 2021.
• “Pokagon Potawatomi Black Ash Baskets: Our Storytellers.” In the Field Magazine. The Field Museum. Winter 2021. Page 13.
  • Dr. John Low [Pokagon Band of Potawatomi]

Spring 2022-Summer 2022

This event is free and open to the public.
Lang is a multi-medium artist who traces the tangled journey paths between self, community and identity and the ways we can be embraced, rejected, celebrated or dismissed based upon perception and perspective. His award winning art presents a thought provoking panorama of the artist’s own processes of challenge, discovery and resistance to labels of assumption and consumption as a mixed-blood messenger.

LeFevre Art Gallery Hours: Monday - Friday, 8 a.m. - 6 p.m.
LeFevre Hall
1199 University Drive, Newark campus

This exhibit can be viewed during regular gallery hours throughout the spring semester.

Learn more about the artist at Gerry Lang Studios [external link].

Return from Exile: the Mixed-Blood Art of Gerry Lang Exhibit PowerPoint, 2022. (PDF)

Sponsored by The Ohio State University's Newark Earthworks Center and made possible by a grant from the Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme at The Ohio State University.

We are pleased to share that Dr. John Low has been elected to the Chicago History Museum (CHM) Board of Trustees for a four-year term. Dr. Low is the first American Indian to have been invited to serve on the Board since its founding in 1856. Dr. Low says he will make sure that he won't be the last. Congratulations, Dr. John Low!

Founded in 1856 and incorporated as a nonprofit organization under the laws of the state of Illinois in 1857, the Chicago Historical Society (CHS) is the city’s oldest cultural institution and home to millions of historical objects, images and documents. Nationally recognized for its holdings, CHS is devoted to collecting, interpreting and presenting the rich multicultural history of Chicago, as well as selected areas of American history. In 2006, following an extensive building renovation and rebranding initiative, CHS created a new public identity for itself as the Chicago History Museum (CHM), which operates as the building and institutional public presence under the auspices and legal oversight of CHS.

• Chicago History Museum [external link]
• Comparative Studies Announcement

Presentation by Dr. Chadwick Allen,  Professor of English

April 14, 2022 4 p.m. - 6 p.m.

This talk is free and open to the public.

All events sponsored by the CSR are free and open to the public. This event is co-sponsored with the American Indian Studies Program in the Center for Ethnic Studies.

Since the eighteenth century, settler cultures have represented North American burial mounds as ancient “mysteries” and historical “enigmas”—sites of Indigenous vanishing that provide settlers with opportunities for creating scientific discovery, economic profit, and cautionary tales of angry ghosts from “lost” civilizations. But there are other narratives to tell about these sophisticated earthworks, other conceptual frames for understanding not only their functions as technologies for interment but also their ongoing power as symbols for Indigenous presence. Drawing from his new book Earthworks Rising: Mound Building in Native Literature and Arts [external link], Chadwick Allen analyzes works by contemporary Native writers and artists that demonstrate Indigenous conceptions of interment within mounded earth. These provocative “earth”-works unsettle dominant narratives by reactivating Indigenous understandings of burial mounds as active sites of renewal and regeneration.

For more information and registration, visit go.osu.edu/allen

And don't miss the Newark Earthworks Tour!

Saturday, April 16, 10AM | Newark Campus

The Center for the Study of Religion is thrilled to be sponsoring a curated tour of the Great Circle, part of the Newark Earthworks with guest scholar Chadwick Allen and Director of the Newark Earthworks Center, John Low. 

The tour will begin at 10am with lunch to follow at the Newark campus. 

Take your tour with you with The Ancient Ohio Trail!

This event is hosted by the Center for the Study of Religion and American Indian Studies.

The Octagon State Memorial [external link] is one of the most spectacular surviving remnants of the Newark Earthworks [external link]. The Octagon is connected to a perfectly circular enclosure 1,054 feet in diameter. The architecture of the Octagon Earthworks encodes a sophisticated understanding of geometry and astronomy. It is a National Historical Landmark and is on track to become a World Heritage site! Portions of the Octagon Earthworks is open to the public during daylight hours 365 days a year, but much of the site is used as a private golf course for most of the year, so access is restricted. Four times each year, however, golfing is suspended and the entire site is made available to the general public. The site will be open daylight to dusk. 

Please revisit the Ohio History Connection [external link] for more information.

Octagon State Memorial

125 N. 33rd Street

Newark, OH 43055

At 2 p.m. Director of the Newark Earthworks Center Dr. John Low will be giving a guided tour of the Octagon State Memorial Earthworks.

And at 4 p.m. Artist Gerry Lang is giving a Gallery Talk: "Return from Exile: the Mixed-Blood Art of Gerry Lang" at the LeFevre Art Gallery at Ohio State Newark!

Gerry Lang is a multi-medium artist who traces the tangled journey paths between self, community and identity and the ways we can be embraced, rejected, celebrated or dismissed based upon perception and perspective. His award winning art presents a thought provoking panorama of the artist’s own processes of challenge, discovery and resistance to labels of assumption and consumption as a mixed-blood messenger.

LeFevre Art Gallery
1199 University Drive
Newark, OH 43055

Gallery Hours: Monday - Friday, 
8 a.m. - 6 p.m.

Learn more about the artist at Gerry Lang Studios [external link].

This exhibit can be viewed during regular gallery hours throughout the spring semester. 

Sponsored by The Ohio State University's Newark Earthworks Center and made possible by a grant from the Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme at The Ohio State University.

Presentation by Dr. Robert Cook,  Professor of Anthropology

March 29, 2022 4 p.m. - 5:30 p.m.

Virtual Faculty Talks Outside the Box Talk

This talk is free and open to the public.

The study of the past is rapidly changing. Archaeologists, historians and scholars from related disciplines have come to recognize that their work is deeply rooted in the same set of settler/colonial narratives and assumptions that have shaped Western society more broadly. In this "Faculty Talk Outside the Box," Dr. Robert Cook will discuss his work to “decolonize” archaeological and historical research practices. His presentation will focus on his involvement in an interdisciplinary study of a particular site in southwestern Ohio--Turpin--and its goal of helping mend severed attachments to ancestral homelands. Yet this project goes further and conducts a type of archaeology of archaeology itself, studying the process as it was first practiced in the late 1800s and remedying its deficiencies through modern field and lab methods in collaboration with descendant communities and other stakeholders. Ultimately, the goal of the project is to develop a model for a decolonized archaeological research centered on collaboration between archaeologists, historians descendant communities and the broader public.

• Department of Anthropology
  • Dr. Robert Cook
• Miami Valley Recollections and Reconnections Facebook @MVRR.OhioArchaeology [external link]
• "Climate Change and Deer Consumption of Maize at the Turpin Site, ca. A.D. 700-1300" 
  • Robert A. Cook and Aaron R. Comstock. Ohio Archaeological Council, 2022.
• Continuity and Change in the Native American Village | Multicultural Origins and Descendants of the Fort Ancient Culture [external link]
  • Cambridge University Press. 2017.

This series of roundtable webinars features presentations and moderated conversations that foster cross-disciplinary exchange. Each roundtable showcases two to three members of the Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme's post-MFA and postdoctoral cohort whose work shares disciplinary, methodological and/or topical alignment.

March 11th, 2022

• Michael Charles | Postdoctoral Researcher, Newark Earthworks Center
• Gregorio Gonzales | Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Comparative Studies
• Moderator: Melissa Curley | Associate Professor, Department of Comparative Studies
• Moderator: John Low | Director of Newark Earthworks Center

About GAHDT’s post-MFA and postdoctoral program

This program supports post-MFA and postdoctoral researchers and creative practitioners and provides professional development opportunities with the goal of facilitating their entry into tenure-track positions in the academic marketplace and the public arts and humanities. The valuable presence of these researchers and practitioners adds intellectual energy and vitality to the College of Arts and Sciences as a whole, contributing to interdisciplinary collaboration between academic units and the development of innovative scholarship and curricula.

For more information, visit the Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme.

Ticket required, discount for members and Museum Friends.

The Petrie Institute of Western American Art's 16th annual symposium will consider historical contexts of earthworks—both ancient and contemporary—as well as individual artists and their contributions to land art.

To mark the 50th anniversary of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s Valley Curtain, a dramatic installation in the Colorado landscape, the Petrie Institute’s 16th annual symposium will explore the history of land art in the West. Making interventions in the landscape and often using earth itself as a medium, artists in the late 1960s and 1970s reimagined artmaking and subverted art world norms.

10 a.m. - 5 p.m.

Tickets to this symposium will also include breakfast, lunch, access to the museum, and a happy hour.

For more information, visit: https://www.denverartmuseum.org/en/westernsymposium [external link].

Opening September 9, 2021.

The Newark Earthworks Center exists today as a center on the Newark campus of The Ohio State University. Opened in 2006, it is the only academic research center on an Ohio State University regional campus.

The Center’s primary focus is to promote research, support faculty, contribute to student experiences, support appreciation of the ancestral sites and peoples and contribute to a campus and university environment of diversity, equity and inclusion.

The Center’s value and relevancy is centered on respect, recognition, preservation, celebration and promotion of Indigenous peoples and their achievements, past, present and future.

The current exhibit "Welcome to the Newark Earthworks Center" highlights the activities and accomplishments of the center together with an imagining of the creation of a distinct physical space for the Center on the Newark Campus.

Newark Earthworks Center Exhibit PowerPoint, 2021. (PDF)

Potawatomi basket making is a reclamation and recovery of a powerful piece of native knowledge and technology and represents a potent counter-colonial and counter-hegemonic act with lasting implications. This exhibit reflects an understanding that objects are not lifeless things that occupy space. They have spirit and meaning. Centered upon intellectual and material property, basket weaving is an opportunity for Native women and men to make their own histories by using the past to ‘read’ the present.

LeFevre Art Gallery

The Ohio State University Newark

Newark, Ohio 43055

The exhibit is curated by John N. Low, PhD, associate professor in Comparative Studies at The Ohio State University and enrolled citizen of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians. He received his PhD in American Culture from the University of Michigan. His most recent book Imprints: The Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians & the City of Chicago was published by the Michigan State University Press (2016).

Sponsored by grants from the Global Arts and Humanities/ Indigenous Arts and Humanities Initiative, the Program in American Indian Studies, the Milliken Fund at The Ohio State University Newark, and the Newark Earthworks Center.

For some the existence of the U.S.–Mexico border fences and walls only recently gained their attention, but Kenneth Madsen, associate professor of geography at The Ohio State University at Newark has had an eye on them for over 20 years. His research has resulted in an extensive collection of photographs and maps.

The exhibit photographs showcase the varying types of barriers along the border and places them in geographic context for communities unable to see the fences and walls in person. Maps accompanying the exhibit are the result of Madsen’s realization of the need for a comprehensive look at the laws being waived for border barrier construction.

“I have been learning about U.S.-Mexico border fences and walls since I undertook a class project on the topic in spring 1998 for a course I was taking on the Arizona-Sonora border at Arizona State University. From there the topic bloomed and it ended up being the focus for my master’s thesis in 1999,” he said.

Madsen has been tapped by news outlets ranging from CNBC to the Los Angeles Times for his expertise on the U.S.-Mexico border barriers and the laws being waived for their construction.
He received his PhD. in geography from Arizona State University in 2005. He has been teaching at Ohio State Newark since 2008.

LeFevre Art Gallery

The Ohio State University Newark

Newark, Ohio 43055

The exhibition “The Art of Ngatu: Tradition, Innovation and Community in Polynesia” combines original artwork, traditional tapa (beaten bark cloth), photography, film and ephemera. Exhibition content focuses on artists Dame Robin White (New Zealand) and Ruha Fifita (Tonga), their process and practice in Polynesia. Collaborating with communities of indigenous women, the artists use traditional methods to produce tapa while also incorporating innovation and contemporary narratives related to the history of Polynesian communities.

About the artists:

Dame Robin White (born Te Puke, New Zealand, 1946) is one of New Zealand’s greatest visual artists. Of Pakeha and Maori descent, White was one of the most prominent painters of the 1970’s, producing numerous iconic New Zealand images. She subsequently lived on the island of Tarawa in the Republic of Kiribati for 17 years before returning to New Zealand in 1999. She has continued working since then with groups of indigenous women, weavers and artists, from around the Pacific.

In 2003 White was made a Distinguished Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit. Robin White says her tapa-based works are about “those things that connect different peoples.” Collaborating with indigenous people, using traditional processes, materials and techniques, her tapa work infuses ordinary subjects with values that are timeless and like an ocean, borderless.

Ruha Fifita is an internationally-respected artist from Tonga. Her ngatu work was recently exhibited at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia. Ruha advocates for increasing youth voices and a continued link to indigenous culture, which she believes is one of the region’s greatest strengths. She is currently Curator of Polynesian Art at Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia.

The exhibition was co-curated by Dr. John N. Low and Marcus Boroughs, former director of the Aratoi Wairarapa Museum of Art and History in New Zealand.

Financial support provided by the Milliken Fund This event was sponsored by: The Newark Earthworks Center, The American Indian Studies Program at The Ohio State University, The Office of Student Life at The Ohio State University at Newark, The Black Box Theater and the Ohio State Newark/Central Ohio Technical College Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Council.

LeFevre Art Gallery

The Ohio State University Newark

Newark, Ohio 43055

Reference and Special Collections Librarian John Crissinger holding up a raised map of the Newark Earthworks.

Traveling exhibit of Ohio earthworks produced in conjunction with The Ancient Ohio Trail.

Artist Candi Wesaw with (l-r) Dick Shiels, Newark Earthworks Center, Burt Logan, Executive Director and CEO of the Ohio History Connection, Dr. William MacDonald, dean/director of Ohio State Newark, Marti Chaatsmith, Newark Earthworks Center, and John Low, JD, PhD., Assistant Professor of Comparative Studies at Ohio State Newark.

Candi Wesaw is from Hartford, MI and a citizen of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indian Nation. Wesaw is deeply connected to her culture, heritage and the arts. She works in multiple mediums and formats, including illustration, textiles, photography and traditional native arts. Drawings depict tribal rituals of the past, while photographs show how her tribe continues these traditions in modern day Michigan and Indiana.

“Her artwork really captures the unique essence of the Potawatomi tribe, and it’s an honor to have that on display here,” said John N. Low, JD, PhD. Assistant Professor in the Department of Comparative Studies at Ohio State Newark.

Examples of her work can be found, here [external link].

Sunday, October 12, 2014 Artist's Reception

More than 75 works focusing on the rich culture of the Pokagon Band of the Potawatomi Indians by Potawatomi artist, illustrator and educator Candi Wesaw were recently featured in the LeFevre Hall Art Gallery. Eighteen elders of the Pokagon Band travelled to Newark from southwest Michigan and northwest Indiana to attend the Gallery Opening. Wesaw and other citizens of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indian Nation also attended an Open House earlier in the day at the Newark Octagon Earthworks as guests of the Newark Earthworks Center (NEC), an official center of the university.

“The Shwatso Shkote Collection, or “Prophecy of the Eight Fires,” was an especially moving collection; showing where the Potawatomi have come from and the possibility that we all may be fated to disappear if we choose to over-rely on technology to solve our human problems,” stated Josh Robison, student participant. He added: “The entire day was very educational and moving; it helped me to better understand the struggles that Native peoples have gone through in this country.” Robison is a senior at Ohio State Newark double majoring in Psychology and History. 

This event was graciously sponsored by: the Newark Earthworks Center, The Ohio State University Newark, the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indian Nation, the American Indian Studies Program at The Ohio State University, the Ohio History Connection and the Cultural Arts and Events Committee.
For more information, contact John Low, JD, PhD., Department of Comparative Studies at low.89@osu.edu.

Former Director Dr. Richard Shiels at the Thompson Library at The Ohio State University in front of the exhibit.

LiDAR image of the Newark Earthworks Octagon State Memorial, image from the exhibit.