The University of Texas at Arlington School of Social Work welcomed a nationally recognized Indigenous scholar, educator and community leader, offering students and the broader community a rare opportunity to engage with perspectives that challenged and expanded conventional ways of thinking.
Dr. Cornel Pewewardy, a citizen of the Comanche Nation, spent nearly five decades working at the intersection of Indigenous knowledge and higher education. His career spanned leadership and teaching roles at the University of Central Oklahoma, the University of Kansas and Portland State University, where he built and led Indigenous Nations Studies programs. A 2024 inductee into the Oklahoma Educators Hall of Fame and recipient of multiple national honors, Pewewardy was widely regarded as a trailblazer in Indigenous education.
On Thursday, April 2, Pewewardy delivered a public lecture titled “Indigenous Relationship to Power, Place and Contested Territories,” exploring how Indigenous worldviews fundamentally differed from Western frameworks. His work examined how power is understood beyond systems of control, how land is regarded as a living relative rather than property, and how contested territories reflect enduring responsibilities of stewardship rather than ownership.
For Stephen Silva-Brave, a doctoral student at UTA and organizer of the event, Pewewardy’s presence represented something deeply meaningful.
“Dr. Pewewardy is one of the very few Native men I know personally who has reached this level in academia,” Silva-Brave said. “There are not many who can stand at the front of a university classroom and then sit at the drum. He is proof that it is possible.”
Dr. Cornel Pewewardy nationally recognized Indigenous scholar, educator and community leader, speaks during a public lecture entitled "Indigenous Relationship to Power, Place and Contested Territories" at the University of Texas at Arlington on April 2, 2026. (Photo by Thomas Johns)
Silva-Brave emphasized that Pewewardy’s impact extended far beyond academic achievement.
“He has advanced as far as you can go in higher education, and he has not lost touch with his culture doing it,” he said. “He can teach from a textbook, and he can teach the things you can’t learn in a book, the things passed down through relationship, ceremony and community.”
That unique combination of scholarship and cultural knowledge was central to the lecture, which asked a critical question: what is lost when Indigenous ways of knowing are forced into Western categories?
“His work validates Indigenous knowledge as a complete and rigorous system,” Silva-Brave said. “Not a supplement to Western science, but a parallel and equally legitimate way of understanding the world.”
The lecture also invited attendees to reconsider familiar concepts. In Western contexts, power is often defined by control, while Indigenous perspectives are shaped by histories of dispossession and ongoing struggles for sovereignty. Similarly, land is not seen as something to be owned, but as a relative with memory, identity and responsibility.
“Western law asks ‘who owns it,’” Silva-Brave said. “Indigenous communities often ask, ‘who belongs to it.’”
Pewewardy also took part in UTA’s annual Powwow on April 4, where he and his drum group provided music for the gathering. In Indigenous cultures, the drum holds deep significance as the heartbeat of the community, making his participation a profound honor for the event.
Silva-Brave said he hoped attendees left the lecture with more than just new information.
“I hope people left with a different lens,” he said. “Not just information, but a shift in how they see the world around them. Indigenous peoples are not historical figures or symbols, we are here, we are thinking, we are producing knowledge, and we have perspectives on power and place that the rest of the world could really use right now.”