This special symposium celebrates the opening of the National Museum of the American Indian’s landmark exhibition, The Great Inka Road: Engineering an Empire, with a fascinating look at the material, political, economic, and religious structures that integrated more than one hundred Native nations and millions of people in the powerful Andean Empire known as the Tawantinsuyu. In this segment, Danielle Kurin, University of California, Santa Barbara, provides some closing remarks.
Danielle Kurin is assistant professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Director of the PL Walker Bioarchaeology and Biogeochemistry Laboratory. She is an anthropological bioarchaeologist who investigates how natural disasters impact human bodies and populations over time. She directs an international field research program in the south-central highland region of Andahuaylas, Perú. While her recent articles and books have focused on issues of inequality, health, violence, migration, and ethnic identity in the pre-Columbian Andes, she also consults in contemporary forensic cases in both the United States and in South America. Dr. Kurin is the Founding Director of the Andahuaylas Museum and Lab; she designed and taught curricula for at provincial universities for several years, and has produced dozens of conferences, workshops, exhibits, and publications specifically geared towards indigenous communities—a means by which Andeans can connect to their heritage and also learn methods of critical inquiry.
The symposium was recorded at the Rasmuson Theater of the National Museum of the American Indian on June 25-26, 2015.
