The CCCE warmly welcomes Ashley Smith, a visiting lecturer and doctoral candidate from Cornell University!
Housed in the American Studies program at Carleton, Ashley Smith is a doctoral candidate in Cornell University’s Anthropology department and American Indian Studies program. Her teaching and scholarship emphasize civic engagement, public memory, and social justice. Smith will be teaching two courses this year: “’We’ve Never Not Been Here’: Indigenous People and Places” (Winter 2016) and the American Studies junior seminar “Place, Memory, and National Narrative in American Studies” (Spring 2016).
Smith herself is engaging with these very issues in her doctoral work. Her dissertation, titled “’We Have Never Not Been Here’: Place, History, and Indigenous Survivance in Northern New England,” examines Norridgewock, a Kennebec-Wabanaki village site in western Maine through ethnography. This village was destroyed by a British militia in 1724, and is now recognized as a significant historic site. Smith analyzes historical production, commemoration, and public history, and the ways in which these processes have erased “Indigenous continuity.” Smith’s work also looks at how indigenous peoples resist these erasures, and, specifically, how the Wabanaki resist erasure at this site in Maine.
Civic engagement sparked Smith’s dissertation research. She says her topic was inspired by “a really intense moment where my hometown had developed a monument project at this really important Native Village site, on the Kennebec River.” The issue with this monument project, as she describes it, is that “nobody had known about it. The tribes hadn’t known about it . . . the descendants . . . didn’t know about it,” despite the fact the municipality knew that descendant held a memorial ceremony at the site each year. As Smith talked with her mother and other members of her community, she kept hearing questions about how this could have happened in the first place – about how it could be that the process of memorialization could begin without thinking about descendent communities. Smith describes a conversation with an elder who said “why don’t you use your graduate school to find out more about how we got to this situation?”
Throughout her research, Smith has had the opportunity to share her work with her community, both through presenting on sense of place and on her Norridgewock research at community conferences and through her long-term involvement with the non-profit Gedakina. This organization, whose name means “our land, a way of life,” works with indigenous communities in New England, including those without state or federal recognition. Gedakina promotes cultural revitalization, youth outreach, leadership development, and outdoor education. Smith says her involvement with Gedakina, as an intern and a member of the advisory board, “fuels a lot of what I do . . . [and] my learning process.” As a civically-engaged scholar, Smith recommends that students who are interested in public scholarship think carefully about reciprocity and relationships. She suggests that students ask themselves “Who are you holding yourself accountable to?” to make sure they’re being “self-reflexive about what the relationships is, and not just what you’re getting, but what you’re giving back.”
In her winter term course, “We’ve Never Not Been Here,” Smith plans to explore why it is that the issues she researches matter for all, not just for members of indigenous communities. As she says, “American Indian political struggles are important for everyone,” but “most Americans really don’t know anything about American Indian issues.” This course examines history, literature, art, politics, and current events to explore the complex relationship between historical and contemporary issues that indigenous peoples face in the United States. The course is a “Theoretical ACE” course, meaning it encourages students to reflect on justice, community engagement, and social systems.
Smith’s courses are social justice-oriented, asking students to think about public discussions of indigenous issues, ranging from casinos, to fishing rights, to land rights, and to mascots and the appropriation of indigenous cultural objects. She wants to help students develop the skills and tools to engage in these conversation with greater awareness and the ability to make critically informed opinions.
Smith believes “courses that require that we stop, we back up, we reflect” lead us to learn “about how indigenous issues aren’t just for indigenous people, but all of us. We’re all implicated. As citizens of the United States . . . we’re all implicated . . . we are engaged in a political relationship with tribal nations. . . I think that even just coming to an understanding that this is the situation we’re in, that the terms on which we have to negotiate equality and diversity are different because of that political reality” is important for moving towards a more just society.
Contact Professor Smith via email or stop by her office in Goodsell to hear more about her courses and research! There will be an American Studies informational lunch session featuring Smith during common time on November 3rd in the Sayles-Hill Lounge.