PROGRAM-AT-A-GLANCE
park pavilion
Opening Ceremony ~ Dinner & Orientation Thursday, June 19, 6pm - 9pm
This splendid occasion commences in the historic Dunes Park Pavilion on Lake Michigan. Congress participants are welcomed with brief orientation remarks, buffet dinner, featured speaker address, and adjournment to the Pavilion rooftop for drinks and view of the sunset from this spectacular location. (Please note: There is an age restriction for rooftop bar.) Please also note that early arrivals (from 3pm-6pm) are welcome to walk the beach and the adjacent dunes (Mt. Tom, Mt. Holden, Mt. Jackson, Devil's Slide).
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OPENING DAY FEATURED SPEAKER
Robert Melchior Figueroa, School of History, Philosophy & Religion, Oregon State University
"SPEECH TITLE HERE"
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9am-12:30pm, June 20
Tour guides: Todd Thompson, Erin Argyilan
geological history
bus tour
When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
And the firm soil win of the wat'ry main...
BUS TOUR: What we now call the Calumet is the ancient history of an endless exchange of lake and land. For ages, tribal nations took part in this unending conversation. The early 20th-century biologist Henry Cowles made modern disciplinary history on the very spot when he saw in the encounter not an environmental struggle of each-against-all, but the passage from maximal disturbance (the shoreline) to succession and resilience. Was he right to see it this way? Two of the truly preeminent regional environmental geoscientists will take us on a tour, across space and time, of this twenty-mile borderland to give us a glimpse of the complex, wondrous, and contradictory stories with which this place on earth daily engages us.
Professor Todd Thompson of Indiana University, the State Geologist of Indiana, and Erin Argyilan, former Indiana University Northwest professor and currently Education Coordinator for the Great Lakes Research and Education Center for the National Parks Service, have prepared a geological history tour of the stretch of lake and land from Mt. Baldy to Miller Woods. We will decamp at various stops along the way to our lunch destination at the Paul H. Douglas Center.
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ITINERARY:
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9 am pick-up, Indiana Dunes Visitors Center
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1st stop: Mt. Baldy, Michigan City
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2nd stop: Kimmel Education Center
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3rd stop: Century of Progress Homes
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4th stop: Miller Woods
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Boxed lunch
Billie Warren Walk-and-Talk
Meet the Filmmakers
Panel/Roundtable
Miller woods
Welcoming us to Miller Woods, Billie Warren, citizen of the Pokagon Band of the Potawatomi Nation and founder of Jibek Mbwakawen, will engage us in a storytelling trail walk to teach us about the Calumet community's traditional relation to land and water, its harmonious communion with oak savannas, wild rice, cranberries, and milkweed, and the close relationship of this stewardship of the land with the community's language, culture, and traditions.
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The National Parks Paul H. Douglas Center for Environmental Education is graciously hosting us for our first set of panel and roundtable events. We begin with a concurrent session in the Douglas Center meeting rooms, followed by a plenary session with local filmmakers on ecologies of the Calumet.
A HAPPENING
ART • LAND • PEOPLE
The strange ecological marvel of the Calumet has inspired us to improvise, undermine, and invent the very forms of our exchanges with each other. The artists-poets-musicians- theorists-historians-writers of this session will solicit your aid in challenging the categorial boundaries that divide academics and publics, presenters and audiences, authors and texts, interpreters and performers. Just as the Calumet finds unexpected ways to resist being monetized, exploited, depleted and enslaved, so we must reimagine our collective relation to it: The same forces that divide the earth and its peoples divide theory and practice, matter and mind, performance and interpretation, human and non-human. Let us reimagine these relations.
• Ned Joyner, Musician
• Kay Westhues, Artist
• Yelizaveta Renfro, Essayist
• Lynne Heasley, Ecocultural Storyteller
• Fredricka Joyner, Painter of Nature
• Haein Lee, Aesthetician, Critic
Filmmakers of the Calumet
Our filmmakers will exhibit a short film or long-form excerpt, followed by audience questions and discussion.
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Patricia Wisniewski, "Shifting Sands on the Path to Sustainability"
Samuel Love, "Calumet: The Region's River"
Michelle Yates, "Rebel Bells Film"
Marta Frank, "Cloud Factory"
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John N. Low, Keynote Speaker
Portage pavilion
A special highlight of our Congress is the final event of the day on Friday, our keynote held in the magical Portage Lakefront & Riverview Pavilion. This Dunes Park structure sits right on the beach with floor-to-ceiling windows facing Lake Michigan. We will be regaled by Professor Low's presentation as the sun begins its descent over the water.
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John N. Low
Citizen of the Pokagon, Professor, Department of History, OSU-Newark
"SPEECH TITLE HERE"
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CONFERENCE
CENTER
PANEL 01
NAMES & NAMING
•”Landscape Change, Place Names, & Travel Routes Maps of the Calumet,” Joshua Freidlein and Dylan Nelson
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•“Climate Frontlines: Environmental Injustice & Vulnerability in Redlined Neighborhoods,” Aliana Quiñones
•“Horizon Marsh and Land ‘Restoration’,” Cole Roecker
PANEL 03
READING THE LAND
•”Nonhuman Intelligences, the Grammar of Animacy, & Literary Study,” Chris Cobb
•”Human-Environmental Reciprocity in the Dunes," Joshua Pontillo
•"A Phenomenology of Place in the Calumet Sands," Jared Rusnak
PANEL 02
IMAGINATION
•“Susan Sontag’s Anti-Hermeneutics and Carson’s Wonder in Existential Relation with Environments,” Austin Hestdalen & Susan Mancino
•"Imperial & Neocolonial Logics & the Survival of the Dunes," Chaim MacNamee
•"The Eco/Imaginary of 'The Dunes'," Jason Michalek​
PANEL 04
TRUTH & FICTION
•“Tribal Stream, Michigan Fruitbelt Collaborative & Land-Based Knowledge Transmission,” Cristobal Borges
•“Eco-Preservation & Healing: Indigenous Wisdom + Western Science,” Megan Hartwig & Rita Palisaityte​
ARTS/ ECOLOGY
•”Musicology, Hauntology, & Regional History,” Nathan Schmidt
•”Environmental Humanities and a Great Lakes Novel," Brett A. Kaplan
•”Digital Technology & Aesthetic Harm,” Brooke Rudow
•"The Grief Lakes," Rene Kourtney Jones
ecological
rhetoric
​•"A Word Fight for Climate Justice," Sarah Lawler
•”An Interpretive Primer for Parks, Protected Areas & Heritage Sites,” Brian Forist
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•”The ‘Natural’ in Conservation Philosophy & Practice,” Nishok G U
DARE WE SPEAK
ITS NAME?
•”Queering the Great Lakes,” Brian Forist
•"Ecofeminist Analysis of the Indiana Dunes National Park," Shoshana McIntosh
•"How Feminized is Indiana Dunes Wildlife? Co-Existence & Governance in the Indiana Dunes," Gaizal Adan
•"Lesbian Relations to the Environment in the Great Lakes," Hannah Fuller
NATURE light TIME
•”Geological Time as Metaphysical Experience,” Roy Scranton
•"Impact of Artificial Light & the Decline of Fireflies," Aaron James Conn
•”Human Nature & the Climate Crisis,” Jonah Branding
FOOD & FESTIVITIES
A Gift of Art: In Celebration of Zoran Killibarda
A Welcome from the Calumet Regional Archives
Harris Feinsod: “The Reciprocal Shoreline at Burns Harbor and Northwestern University”
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FIRE CIRCLE
Indiana Dunes Learning Center
5pm Saturday
FIRE CIRCLE COUNCIL RING
The council ring, an age-old ritual practice inherited (or appropriated) from tribal custom to connect the aims of the progressive environmentalists of the Calumet to those they regarded as spiritual parents, is literally embodied in the fire circle at the Indiana Dunes Learning Center complex. (The Learning Center grounds include several historic sites, including the historic Good Fellow Youth Camp, Chellberg Farm and Bailly Homestead.) Here we will gather with prominent local environmental activists, organizers, and community members to think together about what has brought us to this point and how we can go forward in solidarity with the land. Each of our guests/hosts will begin our deliberation around the circle with a question.
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Jade Mazon, Rebel Bells Collective
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Emily Bretl, Warren Woods Ecological Field Station
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​[organization representative], Save the Dunes
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Tyrell Anderson, Decay Devils
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Mark Bouman, Chicago Field Museum
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Julie Dye, Pokagon tribal representative
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Matt Werner, regional independent historian
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Megan Telligman, Indiana Humanities
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Jeannie Regan-Dinius, Heritage Steward, Historic Indianapolis
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CATERED LIGHT DINNER
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EVENING FEATURED SPEAKER
ELIZABETH GRENNAN BROWNING
"TITLE"
Indiana Dunes Learning Center
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MARQUETTE PARK
PAVILION
Closing Events
Sunday, June 22, 9pm - 12 pm
practicum
workshop #1
Kimmie Gordon
"Bringing Culture, History, & Nature Together for Students Outdoors"
PRACTICUM
workshop #2
David Utsler
"How to Bring a Conference Paper to Publication"
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PRACTICUM
workshop #3
John Arthos
"How to Do an In-Place Field Research Conference"
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CLOSING CEREMONY FEATURED SPEAKER
Ann Keating
"SPEECH TITLE"
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Brunch
Land Acknowledgment
The Calumet and Chicagoland are the ancestral homelands of the Anishinaabe: Ojibwe, Bodéwadmi, and Odawa; Menominee; Myaamia; Illinois Confederation: the Peoria and Kaskaskia; Kickapoo; Mascouten; Sauk; Meskwaki; Wea; and Ho-Chunk Nations.
Indigenous people continue to live in this area and celebrate their traditional teachings and lifeways. Today, It is home to one of the largest urban Indigenous communities in the United States, and this land remains an important place for Indigenous peoples. In April of 2024, the U.S. Department of Interior placed portions of the Shab-eh-nay Reservation in DeKalb County back into trust for the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation, 175 years after the land was illegally sold.
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As a collective and as individuals who are welcomed to this region as guests, it is important for us participating in this Congress as we come together to act toward a more just future that will honor the long-standing and enduring presence of Indigenous Peoples of the Calumet for future generations.
OUR VENUES
(Indiana Dunes State Park) Dunes Pavilion, 1600 N 25 E, Chesterton, IN 46304
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Miller Woods / Paul H. Douglas Center for Environmental Education, 100 N Lake St, Gary, IN 46403
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Portage Lakefront and Riverwalk, 6150 U.S. 12 (100 Riverwalk Rd), Portage, IN 46368
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Indiana University Northwest John W. Anderson Library & Conference Center, 3400 Broadway, Gary, IN 46408
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(Indiana Dunes National Park) Dunes Learning Center, 700 Howe Road, Chesterton, IN 46304
