Date/Time
Date(s) - February 20, 2023
3:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Location
LSC 312, Lory Student Center
Categories
Dr. Jennifer Denetdale (Diné), Professor of American Studies at the University of New Mexico, will be at CSU to give the talk “The Photographs of Milton Snow and the Making of the Modern Navajo Nation, 1937-1959” on February 20, 2023 at 3pm in the Lory Student Center, room 312.
Dr. Denetdale will present her research on the photographs of Milton Snow, who was hired by the Navajo Service to photograph the environmental devastation to Navajo land in the aftermath of Indian Commissioner John Collier’s draconian livestock reduction of the 1930s and 40s. Collier’s policies intended to rehabilitate Navajo land and to provide Navajos with technical and agricultural knowledge that would improve the land and also revitalize the economy, which had been heavily dependent on livestock raising. Read through the lens of settler colonialism, Snow’s photographs show how this progressive reform project sought to re-engineer Diné/Navajo people as reflections of American citizens who embrace democratic ideals, from land use to governance to the family and domestic life.
The event is co-sponsored by the Department of Ethnic Studies, Forest and Rangeland Stewardship Department, Native American Cultural Center, and the First Nations Development Institute.