On October 12 and 13, 2026, the Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands will celebrate North American Indigenous People’s Day. 

We will listen to, and engage with, noted Indigenous activists, writers, and educators Tanana Athabascan scholar and poet Dian Million, Ktunaxa poet and educator Smokii Sumac, Mohawk storyteller Jeremiah Wolf, and Puyallup Tribal Elder and Resource Policy Representative Rodney Sisson. With the honoring of treaties as our main theme, we will be introduced to North American Indigenous struggles of sovereignty and the importance of treaties, while also thinking about how Indigenous paradigms and ways of living can inform responsibilities towards the environment and other-than-humans in ethical practices of climate and political action.

The first day will be open to the public with the Netherlands book launch of ‘Voorbij Winnetou & Pocahontas’ (in Dutch) presented by Laura M. De Vos and co-author Katrien Demuynck, as well as a related exhibition in the Erasmus Hall lobby on campus. Jeremiah Wolf will facilitate a discussion that will allow participants to collectively mobilize their embodied knowledges of environmental care and enact an honoring of the Two Row Wampum Treaty between the Haudenosaunee Mohawk and the Netherlands. Dian Million and Smokii Sumac will give lectures on the honoring of treaties and our relationships to land, water, and our bodies. In the evening, in collaboration with Radboud Reflects and LUX, we will be screening the Indigenous documentary Fish War at LUX, followed by a conversation with Dian Million and Rodney Sission focusing on the question “What can we learn from Indigenous views of nature?” (Tickets can be purchased here.)

The second day of the event will be a graduate symposium for students, PhD candidates, and early-career researchers working in North American Indigenous Studies. You are warmly invited to attend the research workshops in the morning and share your expertise through feedback and questions for the presenters in the afternoon. 

Except for the screening of the documentary, the entry for the event is free, but registration is nevertheless required. More detailed information can be found here.