Keynote with Ken Burns to Open First America Conference, March 26

January 12, 2026
  • Silvermoon Mars LaRose, Yòh (Four), acrylic on canvas. LaRose is a member of the Narragansett Tribe and Assistant Director of the Tomaquag Museum.

Silvermoon Mars LaRose, Yòh (Four), acrylic on canvas.

Registration is now live for the keynote with Ken Burns, David Schmidt, Maggie Blackhawk, and Colin Calloway: https://cvent.me/e0md9b. This event is open to the public, with registration required.
 
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 for a keynote conversation on “The Indigenous Origins of the American Revolution.” 
 
This event will take place on March 26, 2026, from 4:30 to 6:00 PM at the Yale University Art Gallery at 1111 Chapel St in the Robert L. McNeil, Jr. Lecture Hall. The Lecture Hall will open at 3:45 PM; all registered attendees must arrive and check in before 4:15 PM. 
 
The keynote will open a two-day conference titled “First America: The Legacies of the Declaration of Independence for Native Nations,” jointly organized by the NYU-Yale American Indian Sovereignty Project and the Yale Group for the Study of Native America. 
 
Held on the 250th anniversary of American Independence, the conference brings scholars, artists, and museum professionals together with the intention to illuminate the centrality of Indigenous peoples to the Age of Revolutions. 
 
As national attention turns toward commemorating the foundations of the United States, we aim to generate public and academic discourse on how Native nations shaped these foundations and became heavily impacted by them. 
 
On March 27-28, the conference continues with extended sessions on Native American history and the Age of Revolutions. All sessions will be open to the public, without registration required, and will take place at Henry R. Luce Hall, 34 Hillhouse Ave. More information about each session will be posted in the coming months at YGSNA.sites.yale.edu/news.
 
The conference will conclude with a screening of Up and Down the River, a film centering the history the Mohegan Tribe in the American Revolution, 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.
 
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)

All events listed below are open to the public. 

 

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, Registration Required: https://cvent.me/e0md9b. 

  • 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 for the new exhibition Unfurling the Flag: Reflections on American Patriotism

 

FRIDAY, March 27, 9:00 AM – 7:00 PM at Henry R. Luce Hall

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)

 

2:30-4:30 PM: Cherokee History Pop-Up at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

  • 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)

 

Pasifika Fest, details t.b.d. (organized by Indigenous Peoples of Oceania at Yale)

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.

 
 
For a higher resolution version of the conference flyer, click here.
 
For a higher resolution version of the keynote speakers’ bios, click here.