The human story in the Americas began nearly 33,000 years ago, its chapters filled with thousands of years of place-based knowledge possessed by its inhabitants, until colonialism brought with it dispossession and genocide. Now, an interdisciplinary research team at Cornell University is exploring the arts of the Americas to answer this question: How is today’s ecological crisis related to the colonialist violence that shaped — and continues to shape — these lands?

In this webcast, three generations of women-of-color scholars will discuss how they’re working to answer that question with their innovative project, “From Invasive Others toward Embracing Each Other.” The project, funded by Cornell’s Migrations initiative, invites students, community partners, and artists to co-create an immersive learning experience that explores the intersecting histories of Indigenous, Chicanx, and Latinx place-based knowledges through the lens of the visual, textual, and performative arts.

Co-principal investigators on the project include Ella Maria Diaz and Ananda Cohen-Aponte from Cornell’s College of Arts & Sciences, and Jolene Rickard from the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning. Los Angeles-based artist and researcher Sandy Rodriguez is the project’s visual and conceptual artist.