Experts to discuss repatriation, religion and law

A panel of tribal authorities, legal experts and scholars will discuss “Indigenous Religious Traditions and Law in the Current Political Moment,” hosted by UC Santa Barbara’s Walter H. Capps Center for the Study of Ethics, Religion, and Public Life. Free and open to the public, the event takes place from 4–5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 28, at the Multicultural Center Theater, with a reception to follow. 

Panelists will include Vincent Diaz (UCLA professor of American Indian and Indigenous studies), Walter Echo-Hawk (former president of the Pawnee Nation), Anishinaabe historian Eric Hemenway, Christina Gonzales (Coastal Band of the Chumash Nation and UCSB repatriation committee chair) and UCSB associate English professor Amrah Salomón. 

The panel discussion is the public-facing portion of a two-day workshop involving nearly two dozen participants, including a number of Indigenous representatives from as close as Santa Ynez and as far as Nagaland, in northeast India, plus several scholars of religion, and other repatriation and legal experts. 

“In partnership with our Chumash neighbors, UCSB has begun to turn the corner on this profoundly important work,” said panel moderator Greg Johnson, a UCSB religious studies professor and director of the center. “Now we have the opportunity to convene a group of experts to help us think about the future of repatriation, especially as it relates to other pressing issues at the intersection of law and religion, including land protection and educational access."