Rights of native Nicaraguans topic of Brown Bag

Dr. Eric Rodrigo Meringer

 FREDONIA, N.Y. — October 24, 2008 — Dr. Eric Rodrigo Meringer, assistant professor of History at SUNY Fredonia, will present a lecture entitled, “From Civil Rights to Indian Rights: Negotiating Citizenship in Nicaragua,” on Wednesday, Nov. 5, at noon in S-104 of the Williams Center. The talk, part of SUNY Fredonia’s Brown Bag Lecture as well as its Convocation series, is free and open to the public.

Dr. Meringer’s talk addresses a crucial and often overlooked aspect of human rights debates: the rights of indigenous peoples not to be subjected to forced assimilation, as well as their concurrent right to all levels and forms of education offered by the State.

Today, the United Nations recognizes these as indigenous rights, but in mid-20th-century Latin America, accommodating forced assimilation was a necessary strategy for indigenous groups seeking access and a participatory voice within the state-run educational system.

This lecture is particularly appropriate for the SUNY Fredonia campus, which is situated amid Seneca and Tuscarora tribal nations. For despite the shared experience of European colonialism that fueled the Indian rights movement of the 1970s and 1980s in the Americas, Indian activism developed differently in Latin America than in the U.S. and Canada. Here, Indian activism grew out of resistance to government policies that sought to terminate long-standing treaties and obligations. In Latin America, however, Indian rights developed at a time when governments throughout the region were engaged in efforts to make good on past promises of inclusion and full citizenship.

Dr. Meringer received his Ph.D. from Arizona State University. His research draws on his experiences on the Mosquito Coast of Nicaragua, where he served in the Peace Corps and conducted doctoral research as a David Boren Graduate Fellow. He has also acted as an international elections observer with the Carter Center, founded in 1982 by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and First Lady Rosalynn Carter, and has studied the indigenous Miskito and Quechua languages.

The Brown Bag Lecture series, sponsored by the College of Arts and Humanities, offers informal talks on the first Wednesday of each month, featuring new creative and scholarly work by members of the SUNY Fredonia faculty. Each 30-minute talk and/or presentation is followed by a discussion. Refreshments will be served, and all members of the campus and community are welcome to attend.

For more information on the lecture series, please contact Dr. Natalie Gerber, Brown Bag Lecture Series director, at 716-673-3876 or at natalie.gerber@fredonia.edu.