CJS Noon Lecture Series | Rivers and the Politics of Temporality in Ainu Mosir
Michael J. Ioannides, Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan
Thursday, September 24, 2026
12:00-1:30 PM
Please note: This lecture will be held in person (room TBA) and virtually on Zoom. If you would like to attend via Zoom, registration is required. Once you've registered, joining information will be sent to your email. Register for the Zoom webinar at:
https://myumi.ch/kVx6z.
Based on fourteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in Ainu Mosir (Hokkaido, Japan), this talk considers the crucial role that rivers play in Indigenous Ainu articulations of sovereignty and futurity. As an important medium through which kin-based, territorial, and cosmological rights and responsibilities continue to be expressed, rivers connect ancestral Ainu lifeways with visions of an Indigenous future. In their struggles for Indigenous rights today, Ainu activists continue to focus on rivers as the central locus of Ainu sovereignty and the origin from which Ainu cultural and territorial rights emerge, envisioning and enacting futures of flourishing and abundance that are rooted in ancestral relationships to their native lands and waters and the more-than-human beings who inhabit them. In so doing, they insist upon a future for the Ainu as an Indigenous people, challenging Japan’s ongoing settler-colonial structure of Ainu dispossession and elimination.
Dr. Michael J. Ioannides is a teaching postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan Center for Japanese Studies. He received his Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from the University of California Santa Barbara, in June 2026, with an interdisciplinary emphasis on environment and society. His research focuses on Ainu environmental and Indigenous rights activism in rural Hokkaido, Japan. Aside from his research, he is a contributor to the website AinuToday ( https://ainutoday.com/), as well as a saxophonist and independent music producer who regularly collaborates with Ainu artists.
If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.
Based on fourteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in Ainu Mosir (Hokkaido, Japan), this talk considers the crucial role that rivers play in Indigenous Ainu articulations of sovereignty and futurity. As an important medium through which kin-based, territorial, and cosmological rights and responsibilities continue to be expressed, rivers connect ancestral Ainu lifeways with visions of an Indigenous future. In their struggles for Indigenous rights today, Ainu activists continue to focus on rivers as the central locus of Ainu sovereignty and the origin from which Ainu cultural and territorial rights emerge, envisioning and enacting futures of flourishing and abundance that are rooted in ancestral relationships to their native lands and waters and the more-than-human beings who inhabit them. In so doing, they insist upon a future for the Ainu as an Indigenous people, challenging Japan’s ongoing settler-colonial structure of Ainu dispossession and elimination.
Dr. Michael J. Ioannides is a teaching postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan Center for Japanese Studies. He received his Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from the University of California Santa Barbara, in June 2026, with an interdisciplinary emphasis on environment and society. His research focuses on Ainu environmental and Indigenous rights activism in rural Hokkaido, Japan. Aside from his research, he is a contributor to the website AinuToday ( https://ainutoday.com/), as well as a saxophonist and independent music producer who regularly collaborates with Ainu artists.
If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.
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| Event Type: | Lecture / Discussion |
| Tags: | Asian Languages And Cultures, center for japanese studies, Ecology, Environment, japan, Japanese Studies |
| Source: | Happening @ Michigan from Center for Japanese Studies, International Institute, Asian Languages and Cultures |
