The HUNAP Annual Lecture series was established to bring leading and innovative thinkers to Harvard for the purpose of elevating and highlighting groundbreaking individuals in the fields of academia, literature, arts, and Native/Indigenous studies. The series began in 2021, and has since, found a broad, global audience at Harvard and beyond. The annual lecture is supported by a generous contribution from an anonymous donor.
The 2023 HUNAP Annual Lecture with Tommy Orange
Tommy Orange is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, and was born and raised in Oakland, California. Orange’s There There is a national bestseller that won the PEN/Hemingway Award, the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and the American Book Award. It was also shortlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Orange is a 2014 MacDowell Fellow and a 2016 Writing by Writers Fellow, as well as a recent graduate from the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts.
Past Lectures
The 2022 HUNAP Annual Lecture with David Treuer
David Treuer, Leech Lake Ojibwe, will offer a fresh and in-depth perspective on the current state of affairs for Native and Indigenous peoples in the Americas. Drawing from his experience growing up on the Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota and as an accomplished academic, Treuer’s work includes both nonfiction and fiction.
A New York Times–bestselling author and critic, David Treuer has published four novels and three works of nonfiction. He is the winner of three Minnesota Book Awards, the California Book Award for Nonfiction, and the Housatonic Book Award, and he was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Carnegie Medal. His writing has appeared in Harper’s, The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post, among others. He divides his time between his home on the Leech Lake Reservation and Los Angeles, where he is a professor of English at the University of Southern California.
HUNAP wishes to thank the Harvard Art Museums for hosting the annual lecture and their event support
Photo Credit: Catherine Dondero
2021 HUNAP Annual Lecture with Joy Harjo
The 2021 HUNAP Annual Lecture was delivered by U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo. Harjo is an internationally renowned performer and writer, who is a member of the Mvskoke Nation and belongs to Oce Vpofv (Hickory Ground). The author of nine books of poetry, several plays and children’s books, and a memoir ("Crazy Brave"), she has received many honors, including the Ruth Lilly Prize for Lifetime Achievement from the Poetry Foundation, the Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets, a PEN USA Literary Award, the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund Writers’ Award, a Rasmuson U.S. Artists Fellowship, two NEA fellowships, and a Guggenheim fellowship. Harjo is chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and a founding board member of the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation. She is executive editor of the forthcoming anthology "When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry," released in 2020. She lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where she is a Tulsa Artist Fellow.
A recording of the lecture is available for in-person viewing at the Harvard Library Woodberry Poetry Room, https://library.harvard.edu/libraries/poetryroom