Dr. Kristina Jacobsen wins award for an article
The article ‘Don’t Even Talk to Me if You’re Kinya’áanii [Towering House]’: Adopted Clans, Kinship, and ‘Blood’ in Navajo Country” was awarded “the most thought-provoking article in Native American and Indigenous Studies of 2019” by the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association.
“Kristina Jacobsen’s and Shirley Ann Bowman’s article offers an insightful view on the dynamic formation of the Diné/Navajo kinship system (k’é) through the practices of adopting and incorporating in clan formation in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, with some glances at the omnipresence of this history in present times. Moreover, this study throws light on how adoption became the terrain for multiform racial, cultural, and geographical crossings in Navajo Nation-building and permanence; as well as on the extent settler-colonial policies on citizenship and “ancestry” historically disrupted this extraordinarily dynamic clan formation process. As a publication authored by a non-Indigenous and a Diné scholar, this article is a sample of collaborative practice and reciprocity, materialized in a well-grounded ethnographic, archival, linguistic, and cultural research. In our view, this study suggests important ways to historically reflect on questions of tribal enrollment, citizenship, identity, belonging, incorporation, and movement of peoples in American Indian life.” ~NAISA Prize Committee, 2019
Music from the Americas presents Ensemble Vertebrae
Music from the Americas presents “New Music from Mexico,” featuring world premieres by Juan José Bárcenas, David Hernández-Ramos, José-Luis Hurtado, Victor Ibarra and Rodrigo Valdez-Hermoso. Works will be performed by the Ensemble Vertebrae featuring Oliva Abreu, flute, Ana Paolina Hasslacher, piano and Camille Emaille, percussion.
The Enchantment Brass releases first album!
The Enchantment Brass, the brass ensemble-in-residence at the University of New Mexico, has released their debut recording, A Brass Menagerie: The Music of John Cheetham, on all digital formats.
Students from Dr. Kristina Jacobsen’s class, “Diné (Navajo) Expressive Culture,” help build a shadehouse (cha’a’oh) as part of a service-learning project and cultural immersion camping trip to the Navajo Nation.
The class focuses on music, language, poetry, film and expressive arts in the context of sovereignty and contemporary politics on the Navajo Nation.