Stone, Bone, and Clay: Virginia Indians’ History of 18,000 Years

Karenne Wood

November 7, 2017 at 2:00 P.M. in the Pearl Young Theater
(video within Langley firewall only)

Abstract

The talk examines the deep history of American Indian presence in what we now call Virginia and considers how our understanding of that history has changed with archaeological discoveries. The presentation also analyzes the ways in which that story has been presented and how Native people have come to be seen as people of the past through the interpretations of museums and historians, policy makers, and popular media. The talk considers these issues from a Native perspective and offers ideas intended to expand the story we tell about Virginia’s first people.

Speaker

Karenne Wood is an enrolled member of the Monacan Indian Nation who directs Virginia Indian Programs at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. She holds a MFA in poetry and a PhD in linguistic anthropology. She has worked at the National Museum of the American Indian as a researcher and at the Association on American Indian Affairs as a repatriation specialist. In 2015 she was honored as one of Virginia’s Women in History. Karenne is the author of two poetry collections,Markings on Earth (2000) and Weaving the Boundary (2016). Her poems have appeared in such journals as The Kenyon Review, Orion, and Shenandoah.