The UBC Department of English Language & Literatures, UBC Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies (CIS) and Indigenous Critical & Creative Studies (ICCS) are pleased to welcome Dr. Robert Warrior (Osage Nation) as our visiting scholar for the 2025 Sedgewick Lecture. The event will take place in person on Tuesday, September 16th from 3:00 pm to 5:00 pm in Buchanan Tower 323. We hope to see you there!
Talk Abstract
Infrastructure, Integrity, and Indigeneity: Intellectual Sovereignty Reconsidered
Looking back at the 1995 book Tribal Secrets: Recovering American Indian Intellectual Traditions, this year’s Sedgwick Lecture reconsiders the concept of intellectual sovereignty, which the book introduced to Indigenous studies, in two dimensions: 1. The role of institutions (universities, publishers, Indigenous governments, etc.) in shaping Indigenous intellectual work, including literature, criticism, scholarly writing, etc.; and 2. The importance of independent, dissenting voices in further development of intellectual aspects of the infrastructure that supports Indigenous intellectual work.
About Dr. Robert Warrior
Dr. Robert Warrior is Hall Distingushed Professor of American literature and culture at the University of Kanas. An enrolled member of the Osage Nation, he is the author of The People and the Word: Reading Native Nonfiction, co-author of American Indian Literary Nationalism, part of the Native Critics Collective that published Reasoning Together, co-author of Like a Hurricane: The Indian Movement from Alcatraz to Wounded Knee (with Paul Chaat Smith) and Tribal Secrets: Recovering American Indian Intellectual Traditions. He has recently published an edited volume, The World of Indigenous North America (Routledge). He has also edited the NAIS (journal of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association), and edited the book series, Indigenous Americas for the University of Minnesota Press.
Warrior has served the ASA in numerous roles, including as a member of the elected National Council and its Executive Committee (2009-12), two times as a co-chair of the Program Committee (2007-8, 2014-15), and as a member of the Program Committee. Warrior was a member of the six-member steering committee and then acting council that founded the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association. In 2010, he was elected NAISA’s founding president and is now (with Jean O’Brien) serving as founding co-editor of NAISA’s scholarly journal.
He holds degrees from Union Theological Seminary (Ph.D., Systematic Theology), Yale University (M.A., Religion), and Pepperdine University (B.A. summa cum laude, Speech Communication). He has also served as an appointed official in the Osage Nation government and is a member of the committee responsible for maintaining the Osage ceremonial in-losh-ka dance in the Grayhorse district.
Along with his scholarly work, he has worked on numerous film projects, including the final episode of WGBH-Boston’s “We Shall Remain,’ which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, and the History Channel’s “America: The Story of Us.” His academic and journalistic writing has appeared in a wide variety of publications, including American Quarterly, PMLA, MLA’s Profession, Interventions, News from Indian Country, Indian Country Today Media Network, Village Voice, UTNE Reader, and High Times. In 2011, he and his coauthors were the inaugural recipients of the Beatrice Medicine Award for Scholarly Writing from the Native American Literature Symposium. Warrior has also received awards from the Gustavus Myers Foundation, the Native American Journalists Association, the Church Press Association, and others. He has lectured in a wide variety of places, including Lebanon, Guatemala, Mexico, France, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Canada.
About Dr. Garnett Sedgewick
Garnett Sedgewick was a professor in the Department of English at UBC from 1918 to 1948. Professor Sedgewick specialized in Shakespeare and Chaucer. In 1920, he became the first Head of the Department.
