As an assistant professor at a state school, I have the privilege of working with our Native student populations representing 40-plus tribes. I love my work. However, I am the one and only Native American professor in our Ethnic & Women’s Studies Department, in our college and at our university.
There is one other Native who is in management and one staff member at our Native American Student Center (NASC). Several days go by, or more likely, several weeks go by, that I do not see Native American faculty or staff beyond the NASC coordinator. My campus has more than 22,000 students and more than 600 faculty and adjuncts.
Yet, as First Nations people, the audacity remains that we are the least represented among all other ethnic groups. I have many days that I seek discussions on the epistemologies in Native American studies and at times would like to ignore and step away from discussions on the intersectionality of race, class and gender and collaborate with other colleagues on the state of our tribal nations.
I find it difficult to play the token Indian, to be one of the few Native role models and the one voice that fights for the development of programming that meets the needs of our Native students and local tribal communities. The wall still exists. We are still invisible.
Oh yes, there are intermittent days when I am visible. Around Columbus Day and Thanksgiving my office phone is filled with requests to speak to diversity groups and classrooms. My last email from an elementary school teacher requested that I bring items “like pieces of animal skins,” and of course the No. 1 request: “Would you wear your costume?”
As one of the few Natives on campus, I have been asked to offer a blessing for organizations. Although I do not consider myself an elder, it seems I have all the right “qualifications” according to my non-Native counterparts; this is not so — spiritual advisers/ guides or medicine people are the only ones recognized to bless. Although offered, I have not been invited to another professor’s classroom.
I believe my experience as a teacher and administrator in public and tribal schools; my research; work in various native communities; and being a Native woman with life experiences on and off our tribal lands would offer some credibility in history, anthropology and education courses when topics include Native Americans and diversity issues.
