First America Conference, March 26-28
October 21, 2025
From March 26 to 28, 2026, YGSNA and the NYU-Yale American Indian Sovereignty Project will host their spring conference at Yale. Titled First America: The Legacies of the Declaration of Independence for Native Nations, the conference will convene academics, public intellectuals, and museum and archives professionals to examine the legacies of the American Revolution and, particularly, the place of Northeastern Native nations in the telling of American history.
The conference will begin with a keynote by award-winning filmmakers Ken Burns and Sarah Botstein in conversation with Professor of Law Maggie Blackhawk (NYU), set to take place from 4:30 to 6:00 PM on March 26, 2026, at the Yale University Art Gallery in the Robert L. McNeil, Jr. Auditorium. Their discussion will follow a partial screening of the forthcoming series The American Revolution, co-directed by Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein, and David Schmidt. The keynote event will be open to the public with registration (link forthcoming).
Over the next two days (March 27-28), panels and special sessions will be held at Luce Hall. Subjects of potential discussion include land dispossession, questions of citizenship, the U.S. Constitution and American colonialism, the Revolution and Indigenous peoples in American culture, and the legacies of Indigenous enslavement. Panels will be open to the public with registration (link forthcoming).
The conference is sponsored by the NYU-Yale American Indian Sovereignty project, the New Haven America 250 Commission, America 250 | CT Commission, CT Humanities, the Howard R. Lamar Center for the Study of Frontiers and Borders, and the Yale Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration.
Silvermoon Mars LaRose contributed artwork for the flyer. LaRose, a member of the Narragansett Tribe, is the Assistant Director of the Tomaquag Museum. The piece (acrylic on canvas) is entitled Yòh (Four).
