Boston University School of Law
765 Commonwealth Avenue
Barristers Hall, 1st Floor
October 23rd, 12:30 – 2:00pm
Please join us for a talk on Wednesday, October 23rd featuring Professor Kyle Mays.
This talk analyzes the relationship between tribal sovereignty and reparations for Black Americans. While we tend to think of these social and political efforts as separate, this talk makes the case that we should understand them as co-constitutive projects under white supremacy, settler colonialism, and racial capitalism. At the same time, efforts for both tribal sovereignty and reparations are often liberal approaches that don’t fundamentally critique capitalism or colonialism.
About Kyle Mays
Kyle T. Mays (he/his) is an Afro-Indigenous (Saginaw Chippewa) writer and scholar of US history, urban studies, race relations, and contemporary popular culture. He is an Associate Professor of African American Studies, American Indian Studies, and History at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of Hip Hop Beats, Indigenous Rhymes: Modernity and Hip Hop in Indigenous North America (SUNY Press, 2018), An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States (Beacon Press, 2021), and City of Dispossessions: Indigenous Peoples, African Americans, and the Creation of Modern Detroit (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022). He contributed a chapter, “Blackness and Indigeneity” to the New York Times bestseller,, 400 Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019, Keisha Blain and Ibram Kendi (eds.), (New York: Random House, 2021).
Kyle’s work broadly explores three questions. What is the relationship between blackness and indigeneity? How does dispossession in cities shape the lives of Black and Indigenous peoples? And finally, how can we imagine and put into praxis a world in the aftermath of settler colonialism and white supremacy?
This event is generously funded by a BU Learn More Community Grant.
Boston University School of Law strives to be accessible, inclusive and diverse in our facilities, programming and academic offerings. Your experience in this event is important to us. If you have a disability (including but not limited to learning or attention, mental health, concussion, vision, mobility, hearing, physical or other health related), require communication access services for the deaf or hard of hearing, or believe that you require a reasonable accommodation for another reason, please contact lawevent@bu.edu to discuss your needs. Please note, that the office of Disability Services typically requires 10 business days notice for services.