Event Details

Speaker:  Vicente Diaz, Professor of American Indian Studies, University of Minnesota

Vicente Diaz will share theories, stories, images, and illustrations of how Native to Native relations in collaboration with cross disciplinary and even anti- disciplinary research around canoe revitalization, ecological knowledge, and social justice can lead to radical new modes of producing knowledge.

Diaz is an interdisciplinary scholar (History, Anthropology, Cultural Studies, Comparative and Global Indigenous Studies) who specializes in critical indigenous studies in North America and the Pacific Ocean region. He has researched and published in topics such as Indigenous Critical Theory; Traditional Outrigger Canoe Voyaging in Micronesia; Coloniality and Indigenous Christianity in Micronesia; Indigenous Masculinity and Sports in the Pacific; and Trans-Indigenous Theory and Practice. He is the founder and director of The Native Canoe Program which uses traditional Indigenous watercraft and Indigenous waterbased ecological knowledge and technology from across Oceania and the Native Great Lakes and Mississippi River to advance community-engaged research, teaching, and service. This program mixes hands-on, experiential learning and teaching with advanced visualization technologies of Virtual and Augmented Realities, through collaboration with UMN’s Interactive Visualization Lab, headed by Prof. Daniel Keefe of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering.