HOMELAND RETURNS:

In the final HOMELAND RETURNS presentation this fall, Ervan Garrison and Jim Wilson will present in a Zoom webinar this Thursday morning at 10:30 am EST (9:30 am CST) to an audience of students, faculty, and staff at Seminole State College (Seminole, Oklahoma); and via Zoom to the UGA audience as well.

9:30-10:45 am CST (10:30-11:45 am EST) Thursday October 28, “Tribal Homelands in Research and Recruiting, from UGA to SSC,” with presentations by UGA professors Ervan Garrison and Jim Wilson to an audience at Seminole State College in Seminole, Oklahoma, and open to our UGA audience as well.  Ervan Garrison’s presentation is titled “Tribal Homelands and Recovering Place through Remote Sensing & Marine Studies,” and Jim Wilson’s presentation is titled “Anompolichi: The Wordmaster and Living Cultural Sites.” 

Ervan Garrison is professor of Anthropology and Geology at the University of Georgia. He has been faculty at UGA since 1992. Before that time, he was Agency Archaeologist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) from 1990 through 1992. Prior to his federal service, he was research faculty at Texas A&M University from 1979 to 1989. His degrees are PhD, University of Missouri and B.S and M.A. from the University of Arkansas. He is a veteran (1963-1965). He is an enrolled member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.  

Jim Wilson is a lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Georgia since 2017. From 2010 to 2017 he became tenured faculty at Seminole State College (SSC) in Seminole, Oklahoma, where he also served as faculty sponsor for the Native American Student Association. From 2016 to 2017 Wilson undertook a project to spark student interest in tribal employment opportunities, taking SSC students and faculty to visit the programs of federally-recognized tribes in eastern Oklahoma. From 2008 to 2012, he also taught Creative Writing for the Chickasaw Nation’s Summer Arts Academy in Ada, Oklahoma—his first teaching job since getting an MFA in creative writing (2007). Wilson previously worked as a Principal Investigator/consulting archaeologist throughout much of the eastern United States (including Georgia) from 1999 to 2010. He first learned archaeology in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Palestine from 1980 to 1989, and has an MA in Near Eastern Archaeology from the American University of Beirut (1987).  

Homeland Returns UGA, Fall 2021  

The agenda of the Homeland Returns research project at UGA is to engage the programs and people of sovereign Native nations, including many who were removed to Indian Territory/Oklahoma. It also seeks to counter the national removal narrative and to grow diversity at UGA through research that attracts Native American students, scholars, and artists. By encouraging active scholarly exchange between people and departments at UGA and the cultural and service programs of sovereign tribes, Homeland Returns will foster awareness among the students, faculty, and community of UGA. It will also introduce Native American students, scholars, artists, and tribal administrators from Oklahoma to the considerable resources of Georgia’s largest research-1 university. Set in southeastern “Indian” homelands, Georgia remains of vital  interest to Tribal Historic Preservation Offices (THPOs) and other cultural programs of today’s federally-recognized tribes, including the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma and the Muscogee (Creek) Nation of Oklahoma, from whom we've already had presentations this fall.