Filmmakers Ken Burns and David Schmidt, codirectors of the acclaimed PBS Series “The American Revolution,” join NYU law professor Maggie Blackhawk and Dartmouth history professor Colin Calloway for a keynote conversation opening the two-day conference “First America: The Legacies of the Declaration of Independence for Native Nations.” Jointly organized by the NYU-Yale American Indian Sovereignty Project and the Yale Group for the Study of Native America on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of American independence, the conference brings together scholars, artists, and museum professionals to illuminate the centrality of Indigenous peoples to the Age of Revolutions. As national attention turns toward commemorating the foundations of the United States, the keynote and conference aim to generate public and academic discourse on how Native nations shaped these foundations and became heavily impacted by them. For more information on the First America conference, including on sessions open to the public, visit https://ygsna.sites.yale.edu/.

Free and open to the public, with registration required by March 12 or once the event hits maximum capacity. To register, visit https://cvent.me/e0md9b. The Robert L. McNeil, Jr., Lecture Hall opens at 3:45 pm on March 26; all registered attendees must arrive and check in before 4:15 pm. 

Generously cosponsored by the America 250 | CT Commission; CT Humanities; the Howard R. Lamar Center for the Study of Frontiers and Borders; the New Haven America 250 Commission; the Yale Group for the Study of Native America; the Yale Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration; the Yale University Art Gallery’s Martin A. Ryerson Lectureship Fund; the Yale Whitney Humanities Center; and the NYU-Yale American Indian Sovereignty Project.