3-5 April 2008
Purdue University
West Lafayette, Indiana

PROPHETSTOWN REVISITED: A SUMMIT ON EARLY NATIVE AMERICAN STUDIES www.matrix.msu.edu/ptown2008

PLEASE NOTE EXTENDED DEADLINE
1-page abstracts and short cvs for ppers or panels due by September 25, 2007 to Kristina Bross (kbross@purdue.edu)

On the occasion of the bicentennial of the founding of Prophetstown by Tecumseh and his brother Tenskatawa (The Shawnee Prophet) in 1808, the Society of Early Americanists and the Purdue University College of Liberal Arts will host an interdisciplinary scholarly summit on early Native American Studies that will feature panel presentations, workshops, and sessions open to the public, including the keynote addresses and other exhibits, and performances. Since Purdue is only a few minutes drive from the place where the brothers brought their followers together, we plan to have off-campus events linked to the sites associated with Prophetstown.

The founding of Prophetstown was an important historical moment, marking the first significant peaceful gesture on the part of indigenous North Americans to appropriate and utilize an “Indian” identity as a singular racial force of community and resistance. Pan-racial identification had been imagined and imposed by a series of European conquerors and colonizers for centuries, and pan-Indian identity would become the driving force behind the Jacksonian Policy of Indian Removal, enacted as law in 1830. The Shawnee Brothers’ efforts were the first to coalesce and mobilize “Indians” on a continental level to oppose such efforts. Its brief efflorescence notwithstanding, it effectively marked the end of the era when tribes were set against one another by whites for their own selfish purposes.

CONFERENCE EVENTS
Keynote Speakers :
Rick West, Director, National Museum of the American Indian Gregory Evans Dowd, Director of Native American Studies, University of Michigan, A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745-1815 (Johns Hopkins, 1992); and War Under Heaven: Pontiac, the Indian Nations, & the British Empire (Johns Hopkins, 2002)
Chris Eyre, director of _Smoke Signals_, _Skins_, is currently working on the Tenskatawa and Tecumseh episode of the PBS series "We Shall Remain." He'll be speaking on Friday evening at an historic movie theater in downtown Lafayette.
Exhibit of the George Winter manuscript and art collection Excursions to Historic Prophetstown, Prophet’s Rock, and the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art

CALL FOR PAPERS and PANELS

Our general theme is Native/Indian Studies prior to 1840. While the themes and topics of the conference include Pan-Indianisms and Native/Indian history and culture in the Mississippi Valley, we welcome proposals on all aspects of Native American Studies from the contact, colonial, revolutionary, early republic, or Jacksonian era and addressing any tribe or confederation, including but not limited to the Shawnee Confederacies..