Upcoming CIK: Reconnecting Kinship

Wednesday, November 18, 2026, 12:00-1:30 PM

Reconnecting Kinship, part of the Centering Indigenous Knowledge webinar series, will bring together Native American professionals, community leaders and students for culturally grounded dialogue about healthy relationship and communities. The panel will create space for a conversation about the experiences facing Native communities while also centering Indigenous strengths, knowledge, cultural teachings, and pathways toward healing.

This dialogue will explore the historical and contemporary systems that have disrupted Indigenous kinship networks, relationships, and traditional family structures. Panelists will consider how assimilation, boarding school experiences, displacement, child removal, disruption of cultural practices, and other systems have affected Indigenous families and communities across generations. The conversation will examine how these disruptions have contributed to disconnection, trauma, and cycles of family and relationship violence, considering broader historical, social, and systemic contexts.

“Reconnecting Kinship” will center Indigenous ways of knowing and ask what we can learn from our cultural traditions and teachings. Panelists will explore traditional understandings of kinship, responsibility, respect, reciprocity, belonging, community care, and our responsibilities to one another. The dialogue will consider how relationships were traditionally understood between couples, families, clan/band/tribes, and societies.

The event will also connect to practical resources and support including the Bright Sky app, which will be featured and promoted as an additional resource for individuals seeking information, support, and tools related to domestic violence and healthy relationships.

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Explore Our Webinar Series

Background

The Montana Campus Network for Civic Engagement board seeks to raise awareness of, and support for the perspectives and work of indigenous scholars and their work, and broadly the creation and preservation of indigenous knowledge in our state and beyond. This series centers the people and institutions who are working to create and advance indigenous knowledge and sustainable practices. We hope to inspire people to learn more and to seek out ways of supporting tribal scholars and their work to advance and preserve indigenous knowledge. Facilitated by University of Montana Tribal Outreach Specialist and former Blackfeet Community College president Dr. Karla Bird (Pikuni) the series raises awareness of the work of contemporary indigenous scholars and efforts to advance indigenous ways of knowing and being.

The Fall 2025 series continued under the theme Native American Art: Creative Connections to Tribal Histories and Cultures, focusing on the diverse history, literature, and philosophy of these lands through various creative mediums. Join us for four insightful sessions led by esteemed presenters, exploring the profound connections between Indigenous communities and their environments.

This event is ideal for faculty, staff, administrators, students, community members, and anyone interested in indigenous knowledge and perspectives, particularly those engaged in or supporting higher education.

For more information, please get in touch with us at info@mtengage.org.

Who makes this possible?

Humanities Montana, Reach Higher Montana, University of Montana, RJS Associates Inc., Montana State University and Campus Compact are supporting 2025’s Centering Indigenous Knowledge series.

If you want to support the CIK series or anything else we do, please get in touch with Josh Vanek, Executive Director of the Montana Campus Network for Civic Engagement.