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Research Hubs

The Center for Native American and Indigenous Research (CNAIR) is Chicago’s intellectual hub for research and scholarship with and about Native nations, communities, and people.  The Center’s research is oriented by four research hubs, which represent shared areas of interest that our affiliates approach through multiple disciplinary perspectives.

Global Indigeneities

The Global Indigeneities hub engages historical and contemporary expressions of indigeneity, including questions of identity, place, education, and human rights.  Indigenous methodologies are central to this work, which is focused on intellectual, expressive, and spiritual traditions, and individual and tribal histories.  This research is collectively global, moving across North and South America to the Pacific; it is rooted in specific places even as it examines the mobility of Indigenous peoples and expressions across the globe.

Megan Bang

 Hirokazu Miyazaki

Geraldo L. Cadava

 Ramón Rivera-Servera

Jorge Coronado

Nitasha Tamar Sharma

Janet Dees

Kimberly Marion Suiseeya

Sarah Dees  

 Joel Valentin-Martinez

Doug Kiel

 Mary Weismantel

Patty Loew

 Kelly Wisecup

 

Nationhood, Law, & Governance


Nationhood, Law, & Governance foregrounds Indigenous peoples’ sovereignty as members of autonomous nations by studying the legal structures, activism, and forms of governance that have characterized Indigenous nationhood and politics as well as Indigenous nations’ relations to one another and to settler nation states.  This hub studies and contributes to policies and actions that strengthen tribal nations, enterprises, and people across many places and contexts.

Geraldo L. Cadava

 Patty Loew

Scott Garton

 Beth Redbird

Josh Honn

Beatriz O. Reyes

 Doug Kiel

Kimberly Marion Suiseeya

 

Environments, Health & Social Welfare

This hub is positioned at the intersection of issues affecting the health and well-being of Indigenous peoples and communities.  Data-driven and community engaged research focuses on bodily, emotional, intellectual, and economic health and its relations to historical trauma, cognition, policy, education, and environment.  Our work ranges from studies of traditional ecological knowledge and climate change activism to comprehensive statistical analyses of housing inequalities and education policy collaborations.  We support Indigenous health and remain attentive to traditional environmental knowledge and the consequences of climate change, toxic sites, and resource extraction on Indigenous lands.

Megan Bang

 Beatriz O. Reyes

 Abigail M. Foerstner

 Kimberly Marion Suiseeya

 Patty Loew

 Eli Suzukovich III

 Beth Redbird

 Mary Weismantel

 

Communities, Culture & Activism

This hub takes up social justice, activism, and cultural productions, from music, visual art, and language revitalization to local and global advocacy, film, and literature.  Our focus on community allows us to collaborate with groups that have emerged out of shared interests and political goals, experiences of relocation or displacement, and mutual interests in digital technologies. Our research engages and supports interconnected urban, rural, suburban, and reservation communities, and we work with those communities on activist, creative, curatorial, and ethnographic projects.

Megan Bang

Patty Loew

 Janet Dees

Beatriz O. Reyes

 Jack Doppelt

Ramón Rivera-Servera

 Scott Garton

Nitasha Tamar Sharma

 Josh Honn

Kimberly Marion Suiseeya

Doug Kiel

Joel Valentin-Martinez

 

Kelly Wisecup