‘We write our stories, our histories on the land’: Hereness in Janet Rogers and Jackson 2Bear’s ‘For This Land’ Series
This paper will consider the means by which 2Ro Media’s “For this Land” presents viewers with a series of mixed performance and multimedia installations that highlight the interconnection between Indigenous territories, life-giving traditions, and Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) artistry. The series offers meditations on vital questions concerning land, memory, cultural traditions, return, and instantiation, and does so by combining poetry, video and sound. Consequently, this paper will examine the forms through which 2Ro Media (Janet Rogers and Jackson 2bears) have sought to engage with the “spatiality of storytelling” in specific sites. In doing so, it will also focus on their bid to acknowledge and animate collectively shared and ongoing Haudenosaunee systems of knowing in order to establish what the late Vine Deloria Jr. defined as ‘hereness’ within Indigenous lifeways and practices.

Wine reception in the following weeks 1, 3 and 5; Sandwiches for week 7
Date: 1 February 2024, 16:45 (Thursday, 3rd week, Hilary 2024)
Venue: Rothermere American Institute, 1A South Parks Road OX1 3UB
Speaker: Dr Padraig Kirwan (Goldsmiths)
Organising department: Faculty of English Language and Literature
Organisers: Professor Nicholas Gaskill (University of Oxford), Professor Nicole King (University of Oxford)
Part of: American Literature Research Seminar
Booking required?: Not required
Audience: Members of the University only
Editors: Katy Terry, Hope Lukonyomoi-Otunnu