Notable Lectures And Performances At Colorado College

Are we talking about Indians, American Indians, Natives, Native Americans, Indigenous Peoples, First Peoples, or Original Peoples? Are we talking about “tribes” or sovereign nations? Are we talking about what we call ourselves or what the colonial powers named us? Furthermore, are we talking about race, ethnicity, cultural identity, tribal identity, national identity, or some other form of identity? Indigenous folk in the United States navigate and negotiate complex amounts of social identity. Why is this important? Because for Native and Indigenous persons in the US, the consequences and lived experiences associated with these different forms of identity representation are at best, complex, and at worst, alienating and discriminatory. Indigeneity involves racial, cultural, and political identity criteria, which serve to construct boundaries–boundaries that serve to confuse our ability to define and identify Indigeneity. Indeed, very little consensus exists about Indigenous identity among or between individua