California Center for the Native Nations

Neo Native

Events

Recent events 

 

Spring 2025 

UCR's Native Garden Anniversary; Tuesday, June 3, 2025 6pm

co-sponsored with the English Department: Rage, Resistance, Restoration: A conversation on Native Publishing with Erin Marie Lynch, Amanda Castro, and Mark Minch-de Leon; Tuesday, June 3, 2025 3:30pm to 5:30pm

co-sponsored with Media & Cultural Studies: Earth's Greatest Enemy Sneak Peek Screening, Keynote, and Roundtable, featuring Abby Martin and Mike Prysner in conversation with Cameron Granadino, Kēhaulani Vaughn, Setsu Shigematsu, and Mark Minch-de Leon; Wednesday, May 28, 2025 1pm to 6pm 

Niiksokowaiks / My Relatives: dance making & kakyosin, a performance lecture & workshop by E. Macias; Friday, May 23, 2025 2:30pm to 4:50pm

Part three of a three-part series featuring Pacific Islander and Native American trans-Indigenous conversations: From Ipasini to Le Vasa Loloa: Reckoning with Relation and Refusal; Thursday, May 22, 2025 1pm to 2:45pm 

co-sponsored with the Department of Dance: Workshops with Tiaki Kerei, Anamata Artist Exchange & Haka as Embodied Sacredness; April 28 & April 30, 2025 

Book Talk by Katie Keliaa, Refusing Settler Domesticity: Native Women's Labor and Resistance in the Bay Area Outing Program; April 21, 2025, 3-5pm 

Kāpala (Traditional Hawaiian Printing) for Contemporary Art Practice w/ Nanea Lum;  April 8, 10am-12pm in INTS 1113

Part two of a three-part series featuring Pacific Islander and Native American trans-Indigenous conversations: Between Water, Land, and Sky: A Conversation on California Indian and Oceanic Aesthetics w/ Nanea Lum and Mercedes Dorame; April 7, 2025, 12pm 

co-sponsored with the Department of Ethnic Studies: Book Talk by Teresa Velásquez, Pachamama Politics: Campesino Water Defenders and the Anti-Mining Movement in Andean Ecuador, organized by Jennifer Najera,  April 2.

Winter 2025

Part one of a three-part series featuring Pacific Islander and Native American trans-Indigenous conversations: Trans-Indigenous Education: Native American and Oceanic Epistemologies for Student Success, Community Building, and Activism w/ Asena Filihia and Josh Little; February 27, 2025, 3-4:30pm

Fall 2024 

co-sponsored with many departments, research centers, and collectives: Al-Hadenah: Intellectual Sanctuary Collective conference, the initiating two-day event to establish a network of Palestinian scholars across their  scattered locations to gather and think together, organized by Palestinian feminist scholar,  Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian and emeritus UCR Professor, David Lloyd; Wednesday December 11, 2024 & Thursday, December 12, 2024

co-sponsored with the Department of Music and others Encuentro de  Músicas de Oaxaca: Raíces y Ramas (Roots and Branches), which brought together  Indigenous Oaxacan musicians and scholars for a two-day event organized by CCNN  member Xochitl Chavez. 

co-sponsored with the Center for Ideas and Society and the department of Media & Cultural Studies: Waterkeepers: Environmental Justice, Native Perspectives, and  Collaborative Filmmaking, a conversation between Native filmmaker, Loren Waters, and  Laurel C. Smith along with a screening of two short films by Waters, organized by CCNN  member, Freya Schiwy; November 19, 2024, 11am-12:30pm. 

co-sponsored with the Department of Black Study: Book Talk by Bayley Marquez, Plantation Pedagogy: The Violence of Schooling Across Black and  Indigenous Space; Monday, October 21, 2024, 3:30-5:30pm 


2023-2024 


During academic year 2023-2024, CCNN hosted a UC Summit on Native Identity in Higher  Education, a two-day event and a collaboration between three UC campuses. We also co sponsored the California Indian Studies and Scholars Association (CISSA) conference and  a Storyback panel and workshop with Native actors, writers, and directors, organized by  CCNN member, Kimberly Guerrero.

2022-2023 


During the 2022-2023 academic year, CCNN hosted a California Native Artists Talk  featuring Tongva and Acjachemen artist L Frank Manriquez, Tongva artist Weshoyot Alvitre,  and Cahuilla artist and UCR faculty member and CCNN member Gerald Clark. 

2021-2022 


During academic year 2021-2022, CCNN hosted a book talk with Chag Lowry (Yurok,  Maidu, and Achumawi) and Weshoyot Alvitre (Tongva) about California Indian women and  Native basketry traditions and their comic book, “My Sisters,” a 16-page full-color graphic  narrative that honors the special relationship that Indigenous basket weavers have with  their ancestral homelands in California. 

CCNN also hosted “Chasing Tailfeathers,” a staged  reading of a play organized by CCNN member Kimberly Guerrero. CCNN also co sponsored a symposium by the California Indian Studies and Scholars Association (CISSA),  Still Bad Indians: Ten Years Later with Deborah Miranda. 

2020-2021 


No events were held during this time due to the Covid-19 Pandemic. 
 

 

History/Firsts

  • February 2020: CCNN and Mark Minch (English) host the first gathering of more than 20 California Indian scholars to discuss California Indian Studies and the formation of the California Indian Scholars and Studies Association (CISSA).
  • January 2020: Tamara Ho and Wesley Y. Leonard received a $1 million grant from the Mellon Foundation to support CCNN and Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS).
  • 2019-2021: The Faculty Commons Workgroup on Reclamation and Native American Communities is convened by Wesley Y. Leonard (Ethnic Studies).
  • 2018: California Indian Nations College (CINC) opens its doors, becoming the first two-year tribal nations college in California in decades.
  • 2018: San Manuel Band of Serrano Mission Indians donates $1.28 million to UCR’s NASP “to support the office’s long-term goal of expanding efforts to reach college-going Native American students and better serve them as they earn their degrees.”
  • 2017: American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES) holds its first annual Healing the Earth Conference.
  • 2016-2017: The Contemporary Indigenous Arts and Knowledge Cluster Hire brings six full-time, tenure-track Native American faculty members to UCR.
  • 2011: Annual conference, “Indigenous Choreographers at Riverside” (ICR) is launched by Jacqueline Shea Murphy.
  • 2005: Annual Gathering of the Tribes Summer Residential Program, a summer program for Native American students grades 9-12, is established by NASP.
  • 2004 First “Red Rhythms: Contemporary Methodologies in American Indian Dance” conference is organized by Jacqueline Shea Murphy (Dance) and Michelle Raheja (English).
  • 2000: California Center for Native Nations (CCNN) is established.
  • 1994: UCR becomes the first UC campus to offer a Ph.D. in Native American History in the Department of History.
  • 1994: A bachelor of arts degree in Native American Studies is offered at UCR.
  • 1993: Indian Time Radio aired for the first time on the KUCR radio station and becomes a permanent segment on KUCR.
  • 1991: UCR develops a major and minor in Ethnic Studies with an emphasis on American Indians.
  • 1989: The Chancellor’s Native American Advisory Committee is established.
  • 1986: Rupert Costo (Cahuilla) and Jeannette Henry Costo (Cherokee) endow a faculty chair in Native American History.
  • 1981: Annual Medicine Ways Conference and Annual UCR Pow Wow are established.
  • 1980: Native American Student Programs (NASP) is established and UCR becomes the first UC campus to create an office/program for Native American students.
  • 1980: Academic Coordinator position is expanded to full-time and includes outreach to local Native American communities.
  • 1976: UCR hires the first part-time Academic Coordinator to conduct programs and outreach to Native American students.

Past Events

View Recent Events

  • 2021: CCNN, the Center for Ideas and Society, Reclamation and Native American Communities Faculty Commons, and Performing Difference Working Group presented in collaboration with Carolyn Dunn, Kimberly Guerrero, Sarah D'Angelo, and Kalani Queypo, a staged reading of a new Carolyn Dunn play, Chasing Tailfeathers. This celebration of Carolynn Dunn's new work and Native American Heritage Month was the first return to in-person (and hybrid) event since the pandemic.
  • 2020: CCNN hosted Chag Lowry (Yurok, Maidu, Achumawi) for a talk and book signing of his new graphic novel Soldiers Unknown (Great Oak Press, 2019), which explores the lives of Native American soldiers who fought in World War I.
  • 2020: CCNN and Mark Minch (English) hosted the first gathering of more than 20 California Indian scholars to discuss California Indian Studies and the formation of the California Indian Scholars and Studies Association (CISSA)
  • 2019: The Karrabing Film Collective, an aboriginal art collective from Australia, and Professor Elizabeth Povinelle visited campus to screen three of their films and lead a master class discussion with UCR faculty and students.
Neo Native
Neo Native
Toward New Mythologies
Symposium

NOVEMBER 1-4, 2017

Neo Native: Toward New Mythologies explores the vision of artists whose work is informed by traditions within tribal cultures, but whose themes express a newfound contemporary narrative.

Curated and hosted through a collaboration between the Sam and Alfreda Maloof Foundation and the UCR California Center for Native Nations, this four-day series will feature guided tours of the Neo Native art exhibit at the Maloof Foundation and a major symposium featuring more than thirty Native artists, performers, photographers, cinematographers, practitioners, and scholars at UCR's Culver Center of the Arts.

November 1
Sam and Alfreda Maloof Foundation for Arts and Crafts
5131 Carnelian Street, Alta Loma, California

November 2-4
UCR Culver Center of the Arts
3824 Main Street, Riverside, California

All events are free, public welcome
Eventbrite registration required: neonative.eventbrite.com

  • 2008: Sponsored by the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians, CCNN and CSU San Bernardino collaborated to host the California Indian Conference (CIC) in Palm Desert. It is an annual state-wide conference hosted at different places throughout California.
  • 2004: “Red Rhythms: Contemporary  Methodologies in American Indian Dance”, a conference organized by Jacqueline Shea Murphy (Dance) and Michelle Raheja (English). https://newsroom.ucr.edu/793

Awards, Achievements, and Recognitions

  • 2020: Gerald Clarke (Ethnic Studies) has a featured art exhibit titled Gerald Clarke: Falling Rock at the Palm Springs Art Museum and an exhibit titled Selling Democracy at the Crafton Hills College Art Gallery.
  • 2020: Tamara Ho and Wesley Y. Leonard received a $1 million grant from the Mellon Foundation to support CCNN and Native American Indigenous Studies (NAIS) at UCR.
  • 2019: CCNN and the Costo Chair funded four UCR Native American Graduate students to travel to Aotearoa, New Zealand, to present at the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA) 2019 conference.
  • 2018: Gerald Clarke (Ethnic Studies) and Jacqueline Shea Murphy (Dance) were each awarded the “Teresa and Byron Pollitt Term Chair for Interdisciplinary Research and Learning in the Humanities and Social Sciences.”
  • 2018: Costo Chair Cliff E. Trafzer (History) received the Lifetime Achievement Award from American Indian Historians at the Western History Conference.
  • 2017: Allison Hedge Coke (Creative Writing) invited Michell Raheja (English) and Gerald Clarke (Ethnic Studies) to be part of an annual United Nations panel dedicated to Indigenous Writers representing challenged communities. In 2017, Hedge Coke was invited to field the forum panel. Raheja chaired the UN panel discussion and Clarke hosted the guest Native American authors. It is the only Indigenous literature panel at the UN forum and the first time UCR and CCNN participated officially in the forum.
  • 2012: Oregon State University Press publishes The Indian School on Magnolia Avenue: Voices and Images from Sherman Institute, co-edited by Clifford E. Trafzer (History, Costo Endowment Chair) and Lorene Sisquoc (Cahuilla, Ft. Sill Apache). Sisquoc was born in Riverside and serves as curator and culture traditions leader at Sherman Indian High School Museum.

 Annual Events

  • Fall: Native Jam Night
  • Fall: Spirit of the Tribes 5k
  • Spring: UCR Pow Wow
  • Spring: Medicine Ways
  • Spring: AISES Healing the Earth Conference
  • Spring: Native Graduation Ceremony
  • Summer: Gathering of the Tribes Summer Residential Program
  • Throughout the year: NASP Lecture Series
    Learn more about these events at nasp.ucr.edu
  • Indigenous Choreographers at Riverside (ICR)
  • Writers Week Conference featuring Native American writers

Current Projects