Karelle Hall

My research project asks the question of how sovereignty, distributed through the people in diaspora communities, becomes salient through their interactions rather than grounded in the land itself? I will explore this question by examining the communicative practices of members of the Lenape diaspora, who, through ongoing colonial displacement, are in scattered communities, each retaining different semiotic forms of Lenape affiliation. In light of these diasporic connections, this project explores how sovereignty is mobilized in public settings of engagement through both constructive and antagonistic communications and relationships as these nations reckon with revitalization and their fractured semiotic Lenape identities. These public spaces, such as powwows, cultural presentations, and language education, are sites where cultural heritage is celebrated and articulated, language and traditions are passed down to new generations, social and political relationships are negotiated, and identity, recognition, and visibility are performed. I will explore how communications between these dispersed communities conducting revitalization work shape a distributed Lenape sovereignty grounded in embodied exchange of words, gestures, artifacts, movements, and narratives.