Antonia I Castañeda Award Committee Congratulates Dr. Marisa Elena Duarte
The Antonia I Castañeda Award Committee is pleased to announce that “Uneven Exchanges: Borderlands Violence and the Search for Peace at Sand Creek,” by Marisa Elena Duarte, has been selected for the 2018 Castañeda Award. Dr. Duarte’s article analyzed two university studies (Northwestern University and Denver University) regarding the culpability of John Evans in the Sand Creek massacre of Cheyenne and Arapaho men, women and children. Applying theories of subversive lucidity developed by José Medina(2013), and an Indigenous feminist lens to the massacre and its multiple legacies—including the two university studies—Duarte exposed the habits of the mind that made possible the massacre and the settler violence that continues to date. Equally important, she mapped the habits of the mind necessary to respond to legacies of violence and injustice. As historians, Duarte argues, we must turn away from individualistic questions such as “Was John Evans culpable?” and instead ask “What was the nature of the social fabric that compelled Evans to treat Cheyenne and Arapaho women as he did?” and “What are the legacies of Evan’s treatment of women for contemporary Cheyenne and Arapaho women?” It is questions such as these, Duarte argues, that create a truly usable past, and “allows Cheyenne and Arapaho testimony.”
Dr. Marisa Elena Duarte is an assistant professor in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University where she teaches courses in Critical Indigenous Research Methodologies, Digital Activism, and Cross-Cultural Leadership. Dr. Duarte is also author of Network Sovereignty: Building the Internet Across Indian Country (University of Washington, 2017). “Uneven Exchanges: Borderlands Violence and the Search for Peace at Sand Creek,” was published in Chicana Latina Studies 16. No. 1.