Join the University of New Mexico for the third annual Viola Cordova Memorial Symposium April 28. There will be two sessions – the first from 1 to 4 p.m. in the Student Union Building Scholars room and second from 6 to 7:30 p.m. in the UNM Kiva Lecture Hall.
Manulani Aluli Meyer, author of “Ho'oulu: Our Time of Becoming, Hawaiian Epistemology and Early Writings,” will speak from 1 to 2 p.m. and 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. Meyer's afternoon talk will be followed by a panel discussion from 2 to 4 p.m. A book signing will follow the evening talk. Meyer is a writer, artist and student of Indigenous, Vedic, Buddhist and Taoist philosophies.
Panelists include Gregory Cajete, Native American Studies director, Theodore Jojola, regent professor in architecture and planning, and Anne Waters, adjunct lecturer in Native American Studies. The second session will open at 6 p.m. with a talk by Sarah James of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and a performance by the Arctic Village Gwich'in people.
In spring 2003, Cajete, Jojola and others created the symposium in honor of Cordova, who died in 2002, for her contributions to the field of philosophy . When Cordova graduated from UNM in 1992, she was one of the first Native Americans to receive a Ph.D. in philosophy in the United States.
As a Rockefeller Foundation Fellow at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario in 1996-1997, she helped to found the first graduate program in Native American philosophies and Ayaangwaamizin : The International Journal of Indigenous Philosophy. She was also founding co-editor and later editor of the American Philosophical Association Newsletter on American Indians in Philosophy.
The symposium is sponsored by Native American Studies and the Native American Studies Indigenous Research Group. All events are free and open to the public.
Contact: Sari Krosinsky, (505) 277-5813