A conversation with Professor Bruce Duthu

Ahead of social justice artist george emilio sanchez's residency at the Hop, we sat down with Samson Occom Professor of Native American Studies to talk about the artist's upcoming performance, the impact of his work on students, and 50+ years of Native American and Indigenous Studies at Dartmouth.

You are helping to bring social justice activist/artist george emilio sanchez for a residency at the Hop. How do you know george? 

george reached out to me over seven years ago after reading one of my books about the legal rights of native peoples. And he really got interested in learning more about the legacy of federal law and how we arrive at a point in the modern era where the tribal rights to self-determination have been severely eroded.

He was really fascinated with the question of why the country has not done a better job of honoring its legal commitments to the first nations. And I didn't know at the time that he had begun a performance series that he calls Performing the Constitution, so he already had a kind of framework in which some of these early ideas about the possibility of a performance tied to indigenous rights were already percolating in his mind.

That began a conversation. He came up here on a research fellowship so we could spend time together reading. We met a lot, talked a lot and we just were engaged in conversation. From there came the idea that he wanted to focus on the Discovery Doctrine and how that played such a key role in the whole colonizing mission and project, and served as the ideological underpinning of what became Federal Indian Law.

I believe you've already seen his performance In the Court of the Conqueror, what can you tell us about it? how would you describe it?

It is a one-person presentation, a monologue, supplemented by visuals and sound and it's just a multi-sensory kind of experience to put the spotlight on the precarity of tribal self-determination.

I think it's a powerful piece. I was really moved by it. I think that viewers without any background in law and history will appreciate the gravity of what he's bringing. And hopefully, will be moved to action in some way, but at least I think their minds will be open by how law can sometimes serve as an instrument for injustice. To understand how law still has baked within its DNA the ingredients for continuing the colonizing project against native peoples, because Federal Indian Law very much functions in that register.

How do you think george's work and perspective will be beneficial to the students? 

In several ways. george is coming to my class next Thursday, and I think it's always so helpful for students to understand the sort of various avenues that are open to them to shed a light on issues of great concern that call out for resolution, for activism, for attention.

I think george's piece will inspire the reaction that people will want to know more and hopefully want to do more. To say, "I need to be informed about this. My children need to be informed about this. My representatives in Congress need to be informed about this and do something about this."

And I hope george's presentation for students will complement the whole liberal arts focus. In other words, that it will demonstrate how vital the arts are to liberal arts education.  Students can see a subject matter that they are learning about in a law course, but then have their eyes open to the ways that art and artistic imagination can amplify and magnify that issue, so that it's comprehensible, that it's legible to a wider audience, because I think not everyone's going to go and bother to read an old Supreme Court case and have to suffer through of the legal jurisprudence and the sort of mind-numbingly, boring, legal details to come away from this sense of like, "This is outrageous!" But a work of art can do that. A work of art can illuminate, can educate and also stop people, and just say, "Why did I not know about this? What are we going to do about it?" So that's what I'm hoping will come out of it for students.

You will be moderating a public conversation with sanchez ahead of his performance, can you tell us what we can look forward to with this talk?

I plan to ask george to explain his own personal journey. There're at least two journeys that I think people will find notable in the work: One is george's personal journey to understanding his own sense of growing up as a Latinx person in California, but knowing that there were these indigenous roots going back to Ecuador. And so in the piece, george fuses two narratives, a personal voice, and then the experience, the legal experiences of native peoples, and he conjoins those two narratives.

I'd also like to dig into his process for what became this piece. I think people will be really impressed with the deep dive that george did to produce this piece. He actually got a Master's degree in Indigenous Law and Policy through the University of Oklahoma in the course of his research for this piece. So now he has a Master's degree in this field of law. And in fact, I think is graduating this spring and going and performing this at Oklahoma as part of his graduation from the Master's program. 

Dartmouth is celebrating 50+ years of the Native American & Indigenous Studies program this year. Can you tell me about the significance of this moment?

For us, it's really significant for three reasons. One is it illustrates that while the college did not do a good job of living up to its charter promise for its first two centuries, it has really done a remarkable job in the last 50 years since 1970 to make up for that legacy. And I think the fact that not only are we still here, but we're stronger than ever in terms of staffing, courses, the diversity of offerings that we have, our own off-campus program, a newly launched tribal services and solutions project that offers students opportunities to learn by doing so through internships, fellowships and more. So I think that's one thing that this is a significant moment is to take stock of just how we've evolved in such a positive way since the recommitment in 1970.

The second thing is I think it's also an important moment to highlight that along with the status of being a department, which communicates to the broader world, a greater sense of permanency for the long haul, we also changed our name to Native American and Indigenous Studies. And that was to very intentionally pivot to taking on and integrating the concerns of Indigenous peoples worldwide to make sure that our students understand that these are not unique to the American situation. That there's a lot to be learned from what other countries are doing or how they're struggling to better accommodate the claims of Indigenous peoples for their own sense of autonomy, rights and self-determination. So, how are the nation states of the world dealing with cultural pluralism? How are they dealing with diversity? How do we avoid descending into war when there's one group that is seen as so marginalized or threatening that we're willing to take up arms to get rid of them or to isolate them in some ways? How do we create better systems where even the most marginalized peoples feel that the world community is paying attention to them, that acknowledges them, that sees them?

And third, the commemoration serves as an example of the wonderful allies that our department has enjoyed over the decades, partnerships with the Hopkins Center, with the Hood Museum, that I don't take for granted—having been on other campuses. The fact that we have colleagues who actually come to us for ideas on ways to partner, whether it's to bring in performers or to host films like Dawnland, a film that I co-produced and was shown at the Hop a couple of years ago. So to have that kind of, not only acceptance, but willingness to be a partner to showcase and spotlight Indigenous work of various kinds is I think a testament to the strength of what we've been able to do over the decades, since the recommitment in 1970. So that's another moment to celebrate that we take special pride in.