UUFSMA: A Native American Renaissance: Language, Landscape, Spirit

Unitarian Universalist Fellowship Online Service

A Native American Renaissance:
Language, Landscape, Spirit
Speaker: Dr. David Stea

Sunday, March 7, 2021
10:30 am

Zoom link: https://zoom.us/j/414604040 

Password: 294513

By Joseph Plummer

UUF Secretary

March is the birth month — 245 years apart — of two historic Native American Indians, the Powhatan Princess Pocahontas in 1595 and the Nez Pierce Chief Joseph in 1840. In this UUFSMA Online Sunday Service, Guest Speaker Dr. David Stea places their two lives like bookends at the beginning and end of the destruction of Native American tribal societies by European settlers. Then following that history after the death of Chief Joseph in 1904, he explores the modern Native American era of U.S. citizenship, federal termination of tribal recognition, cultural oppression, and then renaissance, and linguistic and cultural resurgence.

Dr. Stea provides a compelling survey of the toxic interactions between Native Americans and white people, from the 1830s Trail of Tears to Wounded Knee in 1890. Beyond the 19^th-century American Indian Holocaust, he offers a keen overview of the Native American experience into the later 20^th century, as Native American nations, especially the Navajo, became more visible, and nearly 300 American tribes sought to recover the heritage that American whites tried to eradicate. From that recent revival, he celebrates Native Americans’ hard-won political renaissance in 2020, when tribal interests achieved decisive results in U.S. Senate races in six states.

Dr. Stea received a B.S. in Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering from Carnegie Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. in Psychology from Stanford University.  He developed the new field of Environmental Psychology at Brown University and was a professor at Clark University, UCLA, the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), and Universitas Gadjah Mada in Indonesia as well as a Distinguished Professor at the University of Wisconsin. He was also Chairman of Liberal and Interdisciplinary Studies at Universidad Internacional de Mexico.  Today he is Professor Emeritus of Geography and International Studies at Texas State University and a Research Associate of the SMA Center for Global Justice. He and his wife Silvia Elguea have lived in SMA since 2006.

To participate in our online Sunday Service, visit the Fellowship’s website at www.uufsma.org and click on the Zoom Service button displayed on the home page. If requested, enter password: 294513. Sign-in from anywhere Sunday mornings between 10:15-10:25 am CST.

Through grants and awards, UUFSMA donates at least fifty percent of its budget to support nonprofit organizations that provide health, educational, and environmental services for underserved communities in the San Miguel region. Please support this work by clicking on the website home page Donate button. Now more than ever, your support is essential.

Due to the coronavirus, UUFSMA has suspended in-person Sunday services and other gatherings. A growing collection of previous online services can be found on the UUFSMA’s YouTube channel. Go to https://www.youtube.com/ and enter UUFSMA in the search box. The UU Fellowship welcomes people of all ages, races, religions, sexual orientation, and gender identity.