Worship Service with Dr. Tria Blu Wakpa
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.