Steps Toward Decolonizing the Academy: Asking for Concrete Action from Diversity Teams

Table of Contents:

• Recognition that Indigenous People are not a Racial/Ethnic Monolith

• Recognition of our Trauma

• Recognition that Continued Indigenous Existence Stands in Opposition to the Academy

• IN CONCLUSION

*This article was originally written for the Spring 2018 Critical Indigenous Theory Course taught by Dean Saranillio

Of all the difficulties I have faced as an Indigenous person within academia, perhaps the most difficult has been the experience of attempting to find belonging within the “diverse” population of the university. I found myself often interacting with affinity groups that specialized in ethnic diversity, especially when I needed to find support for the Indigenous student group. But the interactions were complicated, often requiring a bit of code-switching on my part, in order to find common ground with those I was interacting with. This was not because Indigeneity does not intersect with ethnicity at all, in fact, it is the contrary. Indigenous identity within has to be one of the most complicated, policed, and intriguing legacies of Indigenous survivance through settler colonialism. Because of this, Indigenous people require a discourse of our own and we also require that those who are assigned to help us navigate these institutions, be aware of this discourse as well. Our identity is not based entirely on race, ethnicity, citizenship, religion, or creed. Instead our experiences touch on a number of these issues, but do not fit entirely within their categories. As a consequence, Indigenous students can find support, but it’s never quite enough because there is always the task of educating those we are interacting with before they can be of assistance. As a Black Indigenous woman from Oklahoma and an unenrolled daughter of the Muscogee Creek Nation, I have found that I grew up with a unique experience in connecting with my Indigeneity. Not only was I constantly exposed to Indigenous people of different nations, I was constantly exposed to Indigenous people with various tribal statuses and backgrounds. Even within my own familial background, I had a father that was a white-coded Muscogee man and a mother that was a Black and identified a person of Eastern Blackfoot heritage which has its own complicated history. Because of this, I had been exposed to Indigenous people that did not fit neatly into the box national discourse has been determined to fit us into and thus, have never been quite attached to the idea of Indigeneity as a fixed race, ethnicity, or political status. But these types of nuances are not something most people, and not even all Indigenous people, are made immediately aware of.

NYU is known for being one of America’s more progressive universities, yet, I find myself needing to explain a lot of the nuances of Indigeneity on a regular basis not simply to curious strangers, but to organizations that specialized in ethnic and racial diversity. Because of this, I often found myself feeling neglected and misunderstood even by those hired to help me navigate NYU as a Black and Native woman. There is a specific importance to this that I would like to point out with a question: How can a school improve its relations with a group of people if even their specialists are not well informed on the dynamics and the nuances of the group? The primary areas in which Indigenous people are mislabeled and misunderstood coincide with the conversations on race/ethnicity, trauma, political standing, and positionality within academia.

In this article, I will relay some of my personal background and experience with Indigenous identity at NYU in relation to other identities, primarily ethnic and racial identities, and attempt to convey the critical concepts that need to be realized in order for a school’s Indigenous population to be understood. For ease, I will be structuring this part of the article as a series of asks posed to the diversity-oriented university sphere as a means of moving Indigenous people forward within institution with the goal of eventually decolonizing completely.

Recognition that Indigenous People are not a Racial/Ethnic Monolith

This issue sticks out especially at a school like NYU where there not only is an emphasis on globality, but also a disconnect with local Native communities relationship wise. Whereas the Native identifying students at the university are as diverse as the rest of the school’s population, there is an interesting phenomenon where perceived Indigeneity at the university is tied up in “brownness” and romanticized ideas about tribal nations of the West. This means that many of us are neglected because we do not fit into this picture. We are Black, we are from the East, and we are from the Pacific. We come from nations that have not been memorialized in Hollywood. Ironically, this means the university neglects the Indigenous cultures of the region on which it stands. So much so, that a majority of the school’s population could not tell you whose land they are on at the moment. Given our diversity, our demographic is not immune to anti-blackness or any of the other ills that plague the other primary demographic groups of the U.S. A lack of recognition of these differences within our communities translates to a lack of resources for students within these groups and a lack of more nuanced understanding within our greater academic community. Indigenous students are faced with the task of needing to dismantle racial and ethnic stereotypes in spaces that already recognize these differences for other student demographics. From personal experience, I can recall times where students elected in positions under myself and my co-president have been consulted, and even asked to speak on behalf of our people, based on the fact that they looked Indigenous. Furthermore, there have been times where anti-blackness within the NYU Native community has gone unaddressed due to the fact that those who have been hired to handle these conversations, have no idea how to handle the situation because they have not been exposed to the conversations surrounding these issues.

I do not say this to say that Indigenous people do not have racialized realities or to deny the very real effects of blood-quantum politics. Rather, what I seek is participation in the conversations surrounding these issues as they apply specifically to Indigenous peoples. Scholars such as Iyko Day, are having these conversations, discussing Negrophobia within the American Indian community and how it is often tied up in the language of sovereignty. While diversity teams remain in the dark on deeper discourse concerning decolonization, there are gaps left unfilled where violent theories on “sovereignty” are allowed to be nurtured. These theories play further into the seeds of discord sewn by colonizers by excluding Black, queer, and matriarchal narratives. If these narratives are ignored, Indigenous communities cannot advance as a whole and these hired diversity teams have not done their job.

Recognition of our Trauma

While this is quite a broad ask, I don’t believe it to be an impossible ask. Patrick Wolfe in his article, Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native, speaks extensively about the unique phenomenon of genocide sparked by settler colonialism. He discusses specifically the term “structural genocide” as a means to encompass the duration, physical erasure, and political and social effects of settler colonialism. While I do not agree completely with his term of choice as I feel in his attempt to show the difference between settler colonialism and mainstream genocide fails to convey the very real mission to physically eliminate Indigenous people, I believe that Wolfe has been able to touch on the breadth and modernity of colonization and so for ease of writing, I will use his term. For university administration to truly help Native students, the breadth, modernity, and even university participation in colonial structures must be recognized. First, this starts with land recognition practices. It could be argued that the practice is liberal politics at play, and to an extent it is, but liberalism cannot take all the credit for a practice our ancestors have been doing from time immemorial. To Indigenous people, recognition of the land and its caretakers is fundamental to showing respect and for starting exchanges in a good way. It’s not simply a sorry excuse for an apology. We believe there is real medicine in acknowledging the land. Furthermore, by participating in an Indigenous practice and making it routine, people within the institution would be fighting the erasure that comes as an effect of the structural genocide that took place by bringing Indigeneity into a relevant context for so many that refuse to acknowledge on their own. Now, aside from the argument that land acknowledgements and other exercises to recognize Indigenous people are just liberal lip service, I have also borne witness to the argument that acknowledging Native trauma would unfairly single out Indigenous demographics over others. While it is true that these practices seemingly highlight Indigenous students, there are two very important points that must be understood. First, we do not ask for these acknowledgements for self-serving purposes. We do not ask to have Lenape land recognized so we can spotlight ourselves. In fact, most of us at NYU at the moment are not Lenape and have no ancestral connection to this land. Instead, we want for those who could not be here, those who cared for this place and their histories, to be recognized. To have such a ceremony be self-serving is antithetical to the practice and what our ancestors intended. Second, this practice is not meant to induce settler guilt. It is a common side-effect, but settlers are not the intended audience. Should a settler feel convicted, it will say a lot if this conviction causes them to fight back against structural genocide and the systems put in place that allow them to benefit in ways Indigenous people cannot. If this happens, then surely, even by settler standards, we can say that this practice was not in vain and has contributed to the efforts in fighting the elimination of Indigeneity.  

Recognition that Continued Indigenous Existence Stands in Opposition to the Academy

In the fourth part of her work, From a Native Daughter, Haunani Kay-Trask writes:

Just as universities in other colonies function to legitimate and entrench the power of the colonizing culture, so the University of Hawai’i functions to maintain haole (white) American control. The standard American university curriculum, bureaucratic structure, and white male-dominated faculty characterize the institution.

This quote perfectly summarizes the relationship between Indigenous people and the academy. It does not mean that we don’t use the academy to try and further the interests of our communities, because that is exactly what we do. We participate in these institutions with a long term goal of decolonization, because we know that we can better serve our communities immediate needs if we infiltrate. I have decided to put this section toward the end of this paper so I can better explain why the other two sections matter. The first two sections ask that the university acknowledge our intra-community diversity and our trauma, but I wanted to use this section to more so express the desire that the university come to the understanding that Indigenous scholars’ aims, if their goals are Indigenous-centric, will be to demolish the primacy of the Eurocentric Academy.

As a Freshman in Liberal Studies at NYU, I was made to read the canonical texts of Eurocentric Academia. There was an infatuation with “Western” philosophy that the program meagerly attempted to correct with one or two non-Western philosophers. Certainly, there was an emphasis on the work of John Locke. While his work is foundational for the other students, his work is in complete opposition to my traditional knowledge and serves as an example of academia inherent hostility toward Indigenous epistemologies. Robert Williams in Documents of Barbarism:The Contemporary Legacy of European Racism and Colonialism in the Narrative Traditions of Federal Indian Law points out the role Locke played in Federal Indian Law, specifically his views on property within The Second Treatise of Government. Williams writes, “Locke's famous argument in his Second Treatise that land lying waste and uncultivated has no owner and can therefore be appropriated by labor actually contained an express normative judgment on the Indian's claims under natural law to the "in-land parts of America." At the base of this argument is the belief that Indigenous knowledge is inferior and it is this argument that has laid the foundation for the structural genocide that built up Western institutions. This foundation still plagues Indigenous experiences both inside and outside the Academy in very real ways. It has allowed for the state to take our land whenever they want and use it to line their pockets. For Indigenous people within the Academy, it means we are in constant defense mode over our “right” to be Indigenous and to claim this land as ours. It means we have museums refusing to repatriate because they believe they can curate our heritage better. It means we have more settler experts than Native experts on Indigenous studies and administrations that refuse to see a problem in this imbalance. And so, Indigenous people will always be fighting the Academy while it is structured as is. We will be fighting as long as white supremacist texts are seen as canonical and Indigenous texts are seen as supplemental texts. Decolonizing the Academy would be to destroy the Academy at its very core. Should diversity coalitions and departments choose to accept this as fact, they can be better prepared to serve Native students in a genuine way. Until then, Indigenous students will continue accept any current support that is given with a grain of salt as a means of climbing toward  decolonized Indigenous futures.

IN CONCLUSION

I do not have any definite solutions for Indigenous students in academia, all I have are my experiences and subsequently what I would suggest for improving other students’ experiences in the future. We are told that diversity, equity, and inclusion teams are put in place help students find safe spaces within universities, but this is not possible for Native students at NYU, or really any university, as the structures are not in place to ensure these teams know how to properly support us. These asks are first steps these teams can take toward aiding Indigenous resistance. Whether these actions are taken or not, Indigenous students will continue to survive despite the systems created to eliminate us. So in essence, this article is a call for those who claim to be “woke” to complete their education and to help Indigenous students do the foundational work of decolonizing the Academy.

Bibliography

Day, Iyko. “Being or Nothingness: Indigeneity, Antiblackness, and Settler Colonial Critique.” Critical Ethnic Studies, vol. 1, no. 2, 2015, pp. 108–109., doi:10.5749/jcritethnstud.1.2.0102.

Mihesuah, Devon Abbott, and Angela Cavender Wilson. Indigenizing the Academy Transforming Scholarship and Empowering Communities. University of Nebraska Press, 2004.

“Racism Against Native Hawaiians at the University of Hawai'i: A Personal and Political View.” From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawai'i, by Haunani-Kay Trask, University of Hawai'i Press, 2005, pp. 151–152.

Williams, Robert A. “Documents of Barbarism: The Contemporary Legacy of European Racism and Colonialism in the Narrative Traditions of Federal Indian Law.” Arizona Law Review, vol. 31, ser. 237, p. 253. 237.

Wolfe, Patrick. “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native.” Journal of Genocide Research, vol. 8, no. 4, 2006, pp. 402–403., doi:10.1080/14623520601056240.