First America Conference Program, March 26-28
March 16, 2026
Silvermoon Mars LaRose, Yòh (Four), acrylic on canvas.
Registration for the keynote at the Yale University Art Gallery with Ken Burns, David Schmidt, Maggie Blackhawk, and Colin Calloway has reached capacity and is now closed. All other conference events, listed below, remain open to the public without registration required.
The Yale Group for the Study of Native America (YGSNA) is honored to welcome scholars from across the United States and Canada to New Haven for our spring conference from March 26-28. Entitled “First America: The Legacies of the Declaration of Independence for Native Nations,” this multi-day gathering seeks to explore the myriad ways through which Native American and Indigenous peoples shaped the Age of Revolutions, registering effects that rippled across vast geographies and temporalities – from the signing of the Declaration of Independence to the commemoration of this event today, two hundred and fifty years later.
The conference opens on March 26 with a keynote on “The Indigenous Origins of the American Revolution.” From 4:30 to 6:00 at the Yale University Art Gallery in the Robert L. McNeil, Jr. Lecture Hall, filmmakers Ken Burns and David Schmidt, co-directors of the acclaimed PBS Series, “The American Revolution,” will join NYU Professor of Law Maggie Blackhawk and Dartmouth history Professor Colin G. Calloway in conversation. The Lecture Hall will open at 3:45 PM. All registered attendees must arrive at the Yale University Art Gallery (1111 Chapel St) and check in before 4:15 PM on Thursday, March 26. Only after checking in will registered attendees be ushered to the Lecture Hall, where the keynote will take place.
After the keynote concludes at 6:00 PM, members of the public are welcome to attend a Reception at the Yale Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library (121 Wall St) for the new exhibition Unfurling the Flag: Reflections on American Patriotism.
On March 27-28, the conference continues with extended sessions on Native American history and the Age of Revolutions. Please see the conference schedule below for additional events that are open to the public, including a screening of Up and Down the River, a film centering the history the Mohegan Tribe in the American Revolution. The film screening will be followed by a plenary conversation between Film Director Madeline Sayet, Melissa Tantaquidgeon Zobel (Vice-Chair of Mohegan Tribal Council of Elders), and Beth Regan (Chairwoman of Mohegan Tribal Council of Elders) from 12:30 to 2:00 PM on Saturday, March 28, at Henry R. Luce Hall (34 Hillhouse Ave).
ALL EVENTS LISTED BELOW ARE OPEN TO THE PUBLIC:
First America Conference Schedule
Dates: March 26 to March 28
Locations: Keynote on March 26 at the Yale University Art Gallery (1111 Chapel St, New Haven); Conference panels and Concluding Plenary Conversation on March 27 and 28 at Henry R. Luce Hall (34 Hillhouse, New Haven)
THURSDAY, March 26
1:00-2:00 PM: Author Talk with Christopher Newell on his new children’s book, If You Lived During the American Revolution, at the New Haven Free Public Library, Ives Main Branch (133 Elm St)
4:30-6:00 PM: Keynote Conversation on ‘The Indigenous Origins of the American Revolution’ at the Yale University Art Gallery, Robert L. McNeil, Jr. Lecture Hall (1111 Chapel St). Registration is closed.
Participants: Ken Burns, David Schmidt, Maggie Blackhawk (NYU Law), Colin Calloway (Dartmouth)
5:30-7:00 PM: Reception at the Yale Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library (121 Wall St) for the new exhibition Unfurling the Flag: Reflections on American Patriotism
FRIDAY, March 27, 9:00 AM – 4:45 PM at Henry R. Luce Hall (34 Hillhouse Ave)
9:00-9:15 AM: Welcome Address
Ruth Garby Torres (Brown, Tribal Community Member in Residence & Student Engagement Specialist)
9:15-10:45 AM: Anglo-Saxonism and Cultural Intolerance: The Origins of the American Revolution, Reconsidered
Chair: Tarren Andrews (Yale Ethnicity, Race, and Migration)
Description: This panel aims to reorient study of the American Revolution to overlooked geographies and consider the cultural origins of settler colonialism.
Participants: Christopher Newell (UConn, Akomawat); François Furstenberg (Johns Hopkins); Joanna Brooks (UC San Diego); Sarah LaVoy-Brunette (Cornell)
10:45-11:00: Break
11:00-12:30 PM: The Global Revolution: Anti-Colonial Resistance in the Age of Race and Reason
Chair: Marcela Echeverri (Yale History)
Description: This panel examines Indigenous resistance to colonial powers across varied geographies, from Latin America to Pacific circuits, during the Age of Revolutions, broadly understood.
Participants: Claudio Saunt (University of Georgia); Marlene Daut (Yale); Noelani Arista (McGill); Sinclair Thomson (NYU)
12:30-1:30 PM: Native Nations in the Benjamin Franklin Papers
Participants: Avery Maples (Yale), Ellen Cohn (Benjamin Franklin Papers), Ned Blackhawk (Yale)
1:30-3:00 PM: Revolutionary Aftermaths: Global Missionization, Education, and Indigenous Child Welfare
Chair: Tisa Wenger (Yale Divinity School, American Studies)
Description: This panel investigates the role and legacies of varied endeavors by missionaries within Indigenous communities during the Revolutionary era, broadly understood, with particular attention to the construction of patriarchal norms and impacts on Native children and families.
Participants: Christine DeLucia (Williams); Doug Kiel (Northwestern); Khalil Anthony Johnson (Wesleyan); Hannah Greenwald (Gettysburg); Mack Scott (Brown)
3:00-3:15 PM: Break
3:15-4:45 PM: Revolution and Indigenous Enslavement: Stolen Relations
Chair: Lloyd Sy (Yale English)
Description: This session concerns the enslavement of Indigenous peoples in the Northeast during the Age of Revolutions, broadly understood, highlighting the community-centered database project at Brown University titled Stolen Relations: Recovering Stories of Indigenous Enslavement in the Americas.
Participants: Cheryll Toney Holley (Hassanamisco Nipmuc, sonksq); Linford Fisher (Brown); Lorén Spears (Tomaquag Museum, Executive Director); Nakai Clearwater Northup (Consultant, formerly at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum & Research Center); Paula Peters (SmokeSygnals)
SATURDAY, March 28, 9:00 AM – 4:30 PM at Henry R. Luce Hall
9:00-10:20 AM: Indigenous Sovereignty and Atlantic Advocacy in the 18th Century
Chair: Nicole Eustace (NYU History)
Description: This panel investigates varied modes of Indigenous peoples’ advocacy against colonial powers, within the Northeast and across the Atlantic, during the Age of Revolutions, broadly conceived.
Participants: David Weeden (Mashpee Wampanoag Tribal Historic Preservation Department, Officer/Director); Jason Mancini (CT Humanities, Executive Director); Jordan Clark (Harvard University Native American Program, Executive Director); Maggie Blackhawk (NYU Law)
10:20-10:40 AM: Break
10:40-12:00 PM: Native Nations and the Future of Revolutionary Studies
Chair: Ned Blackhawk (Yale History)
Description: This session looks toward how Indigenous peoples figure in the future of scholarship on the American Revolution.
Participants: Ana Schwartz (UT Austin); Colin Calloway (Dartmouth); Jolene Rickard (Cornell); Robert Parkinson (SUNY-Binghamton); Sarah Pearsall (Johns Hopkins)
12:30-2:00 PM: Concluding Plenary Conversation & Film Screening of Up and Down the River: A Mohegan History Film For America at 250
Participants: Madeline Sayet (Film Director, co-writer of Up and Down the River), Melissa Zobel (Mohegan Tribal Council of Elders, Vice Chair & Justice, co-writer of Up and Down the River), Beth Regan (Mohegan Tribal Council of Elders, Chairwoman & Justice, actor in Up and Down the River)
1:00-4:00 PM: Pasifika Fest at Henry R. Luce Hall (34 Hillhouse Ave), organized by Indigenous Peoples of Oceania at Yale in collaboration with the Native American Cultural Center
2:30-4:30 PM: Pop-up Exhibit: Cherokee Voices at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library (121 Wall St)
Participants: Avery Maples (Yale), Noah Ramage (Yale), Constance Owl (University of Georgia), Sandra Sánchez (Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Curator), Patricia Dawson (Mount Holyoke College)
The First America conference is sponsored by the Yale Group for the Study of Native America; NYU-Yale American Indian Sovereignty Project; America 250 | CT Commission; CT Humanities; New Haven America 250 Commission; Howard R. Lamar Center for the Study of Frontiers and Borders; Yale Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity and Transnational Migration; Yale University Art Gallery, Martin A. Ryerson Lectureship Fund; and Yale Whitney Humanities Center.