On Tuesday, October 4 at 7:30pm, the Whallonsburg Grange Hall will present “Place of Resources, Labor, and Refuge: A History of Iroquoian and Algonquian Peoples’ Occupation in the Adirondacks,” with Melissa Otis of Carleton University. This is the second lecture in the fall Lyceum series entitled “Living on This Land.”
Melissa Otis grew up in Elizabethtown, NY. She received her PhD from the University of Toronto in 2013 and is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Carleton University in Ottawa. For her dissertation, she researched the history of Iroquoian and Algonquian peoples in the Adirondacks. She has published two articles from her dissertation research: “‘Disentangling the ‘Native’ Guide: Indigenous and Euroamerican Guides of the Adirondacks, 1840 – 1920,” in Cultural and Social History and “Location of Exchange: Algonquian and Iroquoian Occupation in the Adirondacks Before and After Contact,” in Environment, Space, Place (2013). She recently completed her book manuscript entitled “Steeped in Sweetgrass: Iroquoian and Algonquian Survivance in the Adirondacks, 1776-1920,” which has been accepted by Syracuse University Press. Melissa’s new research project explores the history of Iroquoian and Algonquian performers who worked as lecturers, models, artists, and actors in and around New York City from 1870 – 1940.
This lecture will discuss the variety of ways Iroquoian and Algonquian peoples occupied and used the landscape of the Adirondacks from pre-European contact to the present. Supported by PowerPoint slides and material culture objects, the presentation will chronologically describe the ways in which these Indigenous peoples worked and lived in the Adirondacks traditionally. The presentation will conclude by continuing the theme of the Adirondacks as a place of resources, labor, and refuge for these and other Indigenous peoples into the present.
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