CORN AND INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES IN THE AMERICAS

This workshop explores recent challenges for indigenous farming communities raised by the viral spread of GMO cultivation, NAFTA, and the growth of agribusiness. Presentations and discussions will deal with productivity and global price pressures as much as with issues of essentializing and romantizing indigenous identities so often linked to corn.

9:30 am:          Welcoming Remarks

9:45 am           Panel I

Indigenous Corn Farmers From Domesticators of Cultivars to Competitors with Globalized Agribusiness

Stephen Brush

Department of Human and Community Development (emeritus)

University of California, Davis

Jane Mt. Pleasant

Department of Horticulture and American Indian Program,Cornell University

1:30 pm           Panel II

Corn as a Dimension in the Construction of Indigeneity

Elizabeth Fitting

Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, Dalhousie University

Jolene Rickard

Director, American Indian Program, Departments of History of Art and Visual Studies, and Art, Cornell University

Scott Manning Stevens

Director, D’Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies, Newberry Library