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With the start of the spring term, Lycoming College announced the Environmental Justice Symposium, a semester-long series of lectures and hands-on activities designed to inspire students, faculty, and Williamsport residents to think about how the environment impacts their communities, as well as how art and storytelling can support the environmental justice movement.
The goal of the Symposium is to educate the Lycoming College community on environmental justice issues in Pennsylvania and beyond with guest speakers and topics that address past injustices and environmental issues, such as colonization, displacement, and coal mining, as well as topics that imagine more sustainable and socially just futures. The Symposium will provide a unique environment to help community members bridge the gap between knowledge and creation.
Amanda Cheromiah, Ph.D., executive director for the Center for Futures of Native Peoples at Dickinson College, will kick-off the Symposium with a talk on Thursday, Jan. 29, 4:30 p.m., in the Trogner Presentation Room in Krapf Gateway Center. Cheromiah will speak on the topic of Indigenous storytelling and how she utilizes digital stories to increase the digital imprint of Indigenous narratives.
The following additional speakers are slated to address the campus as part of the Symposium. The lectures are free and open to the public with a reception following.
Creative Writer-in-Residence E.G. Condé, fiction writer and author of “Sordidez,” an Indigenous futurist science fiction novella helping to establish the genre of Taínofuturism, will read from the novella and answer questions about his work.
- Wednesday, March 4, 4:30 p.m., Trogner Presentation Room, Krapf Gateway Center
Artist-in-Residence Nina Elder, artist and researcher who creates projects that reveal humanity’s dependence on, and interruption of, the natural world, will address symposium attendees. Elder travels to some of the most environmentally impacted, geographically distant, and economically important places on the globe where she researches how the natural environment is changing through human-centered activities. Attuned to change through her artmaking, her talk will weave together unlikely associations between piles of rocks, climate change, meteorites, and the need for curiosity.
- Tuesday, March 17, 4:30 p.m., Trogner Presentation Room, Krapf Gateway Center
Keynote Speaker Scott Manning Stevens, Ph.D., associate professor of Native American and Indigenous studies with a courtesy appointment in art history, director of the Native and Indigenous American studies program, and founding director of the Center for Global Indigenous Cultures and Environmental Justice at Syracuse University, will keynote at the Lycoming College Undergraduate Humanities Research Conference to discuss his work on issues around Native material culture, the history of ethnographic collecting, and museum studies.
- Saturday, April 11, 5 p.m., Trogner Presentation Room, Krapf Gateway Center
“This symposium allows students to not only engage with current ideas around environmental justice, but to directly interact with creators through the two weeks of residencies. To be equipped with the knowledge and also be up close with the practice of making this type of work is a special experience for our students,” said Phoebe Wagner, Ph.D., assistant professor of English at Lycoming College and Environmental Justice Symposium co-organizer.
Cheromiah is from the Village of Paguate located on the homelands of Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico. Her names are Kah-ow-dthu-ee and Sippun (Inupiaq name meaning "Big Guns") and her clans are shaska sinah hanu (Roadrunner & Turkey People). She is the Granddaughter of six relatives who attended the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, including Mary Bailey Seonia (enr. 1885), Howice Seonia (enr. 1895), Benjamin Seonia (enr. 1904), Joseph Ross (enr. 1904), Charles Brown Analla (enr. 1914), William Seonia (enr. unknown), and she honors Lewis Tewanima (enr. 1907). Because of them, she works, lives, heals, feeds the spirits, prays, survives and thrives in the heart of the beast – Carlisle, Pa.
Cheromiah believes one of the greatest gifts she has as an educator, mentor, and sister is the ability to build the confidence of people through storytelling, kind words, and digital media. Ka-ow-dthu-ee cares deeply about giving back to her Indigenous community and transforming spaces through visual narratives and Indigenous-focused scholarship and methodologies. Cheromiah earned her doctoral degree in higher education from the University of Arizona (Tucson) in 2021. Learn more about Cheromiah at amandacheromiah.com, and connect with her on TikTok, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
The Symposium coincides with several academic courses taught during the spring semester at Lycoming College, including “Art + Environment,” led by Marisa C. Sánchez, Ph.D., assistant professor of art history, as well as “Environmental Literature” and “Worldbuilding” courses, led by Wagner.
The Environmental Justice Symposium is co-organized by Sánchez and Wagner, with collaboration from Symposium Committee faculty members in the departments of anthropology, business, environmental studies, history, and political science.