Every college and university in the United States is built on Indigenous lands, though the vast majority of these institutions are not well-equipped to understand the relationships and obligations this fact entails. Moreover, many of these institutions have Native American/Indigenous collections in their keeping that may not be NAGPRA compliant, creating further complications and obligations to Native Nations. How does an institution, or even parts of an institution, begin repair work to build relationships with and obligations to Native Nations?  This presentation uses Dr. King’s experiences working with the McClung Museum at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and the creation of the Homelands: Connecting to Mounds Through Native Art exhibition alongside four Native Nations as an example of how we can support Indigenous voices and begin the long process of developing better relationships to the peoples whose land we are on. 

Lisa King is Associate Professor of Rhetoric, Writing, and Linguistics and Director of First Year Writing in the Department of English at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. Her work is interdisciplinary, based on cultural rhetorics with an emphasis in contemporary Native American/Indigenous rhetorics. She is co-editor of Survivance, Sovereignty, and Story: Teaching American Indian Rhetorics (with Joyce Rain Anderson and Rose Gubele, 2015) and Decolonial Possibilities:  Indigenously Rooted Practices in Rhetoric and Writing (with Andrea Riley Mukavetz, 2025), and author of Legible Sovereignties: Rhetoric, Representations, and Native American Museums (2017). She is also co-curator on a collaborative exhibition with four Native Nations at UTK’s McClung Museum, titled, “Homelands: Connecting to Mounds through Native Art” (2025-2028).