/24-7PressRelease/ - LAWRENCE, KS, September 04, 2008 - The final stop in a three-year, eleven state series of symposia focusing on diplomatic relations between American Indian Tribes and various levels of the U.S. government will take place in Lawrence, Kansas on Friday, September 12, 2008. Actor Wes Studi (Last of the Mohicans, Geronimo) will appear, along with filmmaker Kevin Willmott (CSA: Confederate States of America, Bunker Hill); Robert J. Miller, Professor at Lewis & Clark Law School of Portland, Oregon; Todd Fuller, President of Pawnee Nation College of Pawnee, Oklahoma and Dan Wildcat, Director of the Haskell Environmental Research Studies Center and of the American Indian Studies Program at Haskell Indian Nations University.
The symposium will take place at The Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics on the West Campus of The University of Kansas, beginning at 8:30am and ending at 4:30pm CT. It is free and open to the public. Speakers will discuss Native American issues and policies during the 200 years since Lewis & Clark traveled through this area, and look into the future. The opening presentation will focus on Lewis and Clark's political interactions with Indian Nations. Subsequent presentations will focus on the preservation of indigenous Native American languages, and the history of Native American boarding schools.
The event will premiere exclusive clips from the upcoming film The Only Good Indian, starring Wes Studi and directed by Kevin Willmott. Thomas L. Carmody, writer and producer of the film, will also attend, along with fellow producers Greg Hurd and Scott Richardson.
The symposium will open with a special Tribal Flag Ceremony presented by The Prairie Band Potawatomi Color Guard. Outside the Dole Institute, flags representing the tribes encountered by the Lewis & Clark expedition will be on display. As part of the National Lewis & Clark Bicentennial Commemoration, the flags were thoroughly researched, carefully rendered with state-of-the-art computer graphics, screen-printed on high-quality bunting - and made available for the first time as an integrated collection.
In 2003, The Lewis and Clark Midwest Trail States formed an alliance to host a series of events surrounding the importance of diplomatic relations between the Federal Government, State and Local governments and American Indian Tribes. The eleven Lewis and Clark Trail States include Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Oregon and Washington. The Kansas Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Commission has been the lead state and managed the overall Diplomacy Symposium Project.
"Through these public symposia, we have sought to reshape and enrich the conversation about the Lewis and Clark Expedition and the cultural aftermath experienced by the Tribal Nations following the Lewis and Clark Expedition," said Chris Howell, Vice-Chair of the Kansas Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Commission and coordinator of the events. "It is the hope of the Midwest Trail States that these symposia will lead to further research and perhaps foster changes in the diplomatic relationships of the United States and Tribal Nations across the United States."
A National Park Service Challenge Cost Share Grant awarded to the Kansas Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Commission on behalf of the Midwest Trail States is making this series of symposia possible. This final event is sponsored by a National Park Service Challenge Cost Share Grant, the Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics, Kansas State Historical Society, the Kansas Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Commission, the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation and the Kickapoo Tribe in Kansas.
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