Indigenous Ways of Knowing, Language and Storytelling Panel

The Humanities Program at UNC Asheville invites you to a virtual panel of “Indigenous Ways of Knowing, Language and Storytelling.”

Featured panelists will include Sol Neely, Juan G. Sánchez Martínez, Gilliam Jackson aka Doyi, and Trey Adcock (ᏣᎳᎩᎯ ᎠᏰᎵ, enrolled Cherokee Nation) – a group whose work and experience is intimately informed by and connected to Indigenous cultures of North and South America. Among other things, the panel will discuss some of the ways Indigenous cultures see and understand the world, how Indigenous languages reflect worldviews rooted in relationships, and how storytelling serves to communicate knowledge across generations.

Register for the panel through Zoom.

And later that afternoon, from 5 – 7 pm, students, staff and faculty are invited to attend an in-person fire circle at Mullen Park to engage in informal conversation around the themes of language, storytelling, and indigenous worldviews. These events are made possible with support from the Humanities Program, Center for Diversity Education, Center for Native Health, Key Center for Community Engaged Learning, Siwar Mayu, and assistance from the Center for Native Health.

About the panelists:
Sol Neely, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, is the director of composition at Heritage University (located on the Yakama nation). He earned his Ph.D. from Purdue University’s Philosophy & Literature program (2009), with specializations in Theory and Cultural Studies, Native American Literature and Critical Indigenous Studies, Composition Theory, Ethics, and Literary Studies. In 2012, Neely started a prison education program called The Flying University, bringing university students inside the prison for mutual and collaborative study.

Juan G. Sánchez Martínez grew up in Bakatá/Bogotá, Colombian Andes. He dedicates his creative and scholarly writing to Indigenous cultural expressions from Abiayala (the Americas.) His book of poetry, Altamar, was awarded in 2016 with the National Prize Universidad de Antioquia, Colombia. He collaborates and translates for the online publication Siwar Mayu, A River of Hummingbirds. He is currently an Associate Professor of Languages and Literatures, and Native American and Indigenous Studies at the University of North Carolina Asheville.

Gilliam Jackson aka Doyi is a full-blood Cherokee fluent speaker. He has led and developed several nonprofit organizations during almost 50 years of his professional life. He started teaching sixth grade and is currently teaching at the University of North Carolina Asheville and Stanford. Early in his professional career, he realized the need to preserve the history, language and culture of his isolated community. He has audio and video recorded several oral histories of the Snowbird Community. He is presently working part-time as Executive Director of Snowbird Cherokee Traditions, which operates a summer and after-school Cherokee Language Program.

Trey Adcock (ᏣᎳᎩᎯ ᎠᏰᎵ, enrolled Cherokee Nation), PhD, is an associate professor of Interdisciplinary Studies and the director of American Indian & Indigenous Studies at the University of North Carolina Asheville. He was named one of seven national Public Engagement Fellows in 2018-2019 by the Whiting Foundation for his work documenting a Bureau of Indian Affairs run day school in the TutiYi “Snowbird” Cherokee Community. Adcock’s work has been published in the Journal of American Indian Education, Teaching Tolerance and Readings in Race, Ethnicity and Immigration. He currently serves as the Executive Director of the Center for Native Health and sits on the Editorial Board for the Journal of Cherokee Studies.