Thu. Dec 10 | 5:30-7pm | Honoring the Native Voice Lecture with Dr. Deloria (Yankton Dakota)

Honoring the Native Voice Annual Lecture: Dr. Philip J. Deloria (Yankton Dakota)

The [Literal] Art of War: Red Power and the Long Vietnam

The phrase “the art of war” cannot escape associations with Sun Tzu’s ancient tract on military strategy: war, in its telling, has an artfulness to it; it is a thing requiring contemplation. But war also produces its own aesthetics, art in the most literal sense, often crafted by soldiers themselves. For Native veterans of Vietnam, the conflict in question had a distinct, even contradictory nature, for their jungle war abroad intersected with decolonial struggles around the world and, domestically, with the rise of a Red Power movement that aimed to take on the government of the United States. This talk will consider the tangled relationship between art, activism, and military service among those shaped by the long Vietnam war, a conflict that ran in parallel with the Red Power movement.

This is the second in a series of lectures supported by the Sue and Bob Kirkpatrick Fund, entitled Honoring the Native Voice Annual Lecture. It is presented in association with Outburst: Native American Art after Vietnam, on view at the Wheelwright Museum from October 31, 2026-April 17, 2027. The Sue and Bob Kirkpatrick Fund aims to increase partnerships, visibility, and awareness of museum programming.

This event will be held in the Library. 
All attendees must register.
Seating is limited for this intimate event.
PLEASE NOTE
Registration is not refundable, this is an in-person only event. 

Those registered as members who do not have a current membership will need to pay for a membership or risk their spots being re-assigned due to demand: Membership can be paid for at this link.

If you register for a member spot and do not complete your membership, your seat will be refunded or reassigned. You may repurchase a paid spot as available.

ABOUT: Philip J. Deloria is the Leverett Saltonstall Professor of History at Harvard University, and the author Playing Indian, Indians in Unexpected Places, and Becoming Mary Sully: Toward an American Indian Abstract, along with numerous articles and two co-edited volumes. Deloria received the Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University and has taught at the University of Colorado and the University of Michigan. He has been a long-serving trustee of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian, president of the American Studies Association, the Organization of American Historians, and the Society of American Historians, and is an elected member of the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.