Loading Map....

Date/Time
Date(s) - 09/08/19
10:00am-11:15am

Location
All Souls Church


Settler (In)justice: Native American Imprisonment on Lakota Lands

Today Native American adults and youth are overrepresented in detention

centers and receive some of the harshest treatment from state and federal carceral

institutions. South Dakota in particular is infamous for its strict laws and severe sentencing of

Indigenous people. This talk will address the ways that Native imprisonment serves settler

colonial aims and possibilities for moving beyond settler colonial modes of (in)justice.

Bio: Dr. Tria Blu Wakpa is an Assistant Professor of Dance Studies in the World Arts

and Cultures/Dance Department at UC Los Angeles. She received a Ph.D. and M.A.

from the Department of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing

from San Diego State University. She is a scholar and practitioner of Native American

dance, North American Hand Talk (Indigenous sign language), martial arts, and yoga,

and performs and publishes her poetry in a variety of venues. Her book project, Native

American Embodiment in Educational and Carceral Contexts: Fixing, Eclipsing, and

Liberating, theorizes how and why the U.S. has attempted to manage Native mobilities,

and conversely, how Native bodies and movement forms (basketball, boxing,

gardening, theater, and yoga) have carried, generated, and transmitted knowledge in

educational and carceral institutions on Lakota lands in what is often referred to as

South Dakota. She is married to Dr. Makha Blu Wakpa and the mother of their two

children.