Newberry Library | Storytelling, Climate Justice, and Self-Determined Indigenous Futures

What does it mean to live well with the Earth in the face of climate and ecological crisis? What does a self-determined climate future look like for Indigenous communities and peoples who have persisted despite centuries of colonization and environmental upheaval?

In this year’s D’Arcy McNickle Distinguished Lecture, Deborah McGregor addresses Indigenous climate change futures envisioned and generated by Elders, community knowledge holders, and the Indigenous Studies academic community.

McGregor will be joined by Teresa Montoya to explore how we can learn from the past through storywork that may inform our collective and sustainable future.

This program is the first event in “Relational Futures: A Symposium for Indigenous Land, Water, and Environment,” a multi-day conference bringing together Indigenous scholars, activists, and policy for dialogue around our relationships to land, water, and environment.

“Relational Futures” is cosponsored by the D’Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies at the Newberry, the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research at Northwestern University, and Toward a Common Cause: Art, Social Change, and the MacArthur Fellows Program at 40, organized by the Smart Museum of Art in collaboration with exhibition, programmatic, and research partners across Chicago.