The current status of multicultural and diversity efforts suggests the need for incorporating into the discussion of librarianship an understanding of previously underrepresented populations such as the American Indian. American Indian Studies speaks from the American Indian perspective and addresses the contemporary condition of American Indians.…

The relationship between American Indians and the U.S. federal government and state governments is complicated. It is a relationship that controls almost all aspects of tribal life and has resulted in American Indians being the most legislated people in the United States. For many years tribal people relied on non-Native attorneys to help navigate…

This article presents the author's confessions about being an anthropological poser. He shares a series of short fragments that evidence the ways he has drawn the line around his work. He draws some lessons about how to work collaboratively and effectively as Natives, scholars, and Native scholars. He closes this confession by admitting that he…

The espoused foundation of U.S. society, "E pluribus unum" (out of many, one), is based on the belief that this nation should simultaneously support pluralism and promote unity. The road to making this ideal a reality, however, has not always been smooth. The ever-widening achievement gap highlights how this discordance plays out in our…

Among Oklahoma's 2,636-member Wichita tribe, octogenarian Doris McLemore is the sole person who fluently speaks the native language. And Terri Parton, president of Wichita and Affiliated Tribes, says that makes her both a treasure and an imperiled, cultural linchpin. Developing a coterie of community-based American Indians who are restoring,…

In this article, the author aims to answer three questions that Ken Lincoln asked in the introduction to his book. Where have Indians come? What have they learned? And what lies ahead? The author argues that many Indian tribes have power now with their business opportunities. Things are changing in many ways for them. They can say what they want…

American Indian studies celebrates forty years at a conference in conjunction with a campuswide effort to recognize the development of interdisciplinary studies programs in the second half of the twentieth century. Interdisciplinary programs (IDPs) are a major aspect of the progress of academics in the United States. The author's point at the…

As a student at Whittier College, Robert Jacobo relished learning more about Native American culture through courses in history and anthropology. But it was a business management course that helped him make up his mind about what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. "The professor was also doing some consulting for an Indian tribe," says…

American Indian higher education in the United States has evolved within paternalistic, hierarchical decision-making policies and practices based on complex sociopolitical and cultural factors since the 1600s. Indigenous peoples had historically been excluded from most decisions affecting their lives until the 20th century when a deliberate Indian…

American Indian studies claimed a space to interrogate Western disciplinary epistemologies utilizing Indigenous ways of "knowing". This epistemological struggle has, not surprisingly, been that: a struggle. As the author writes in 2010, people understand that their continuing desire to bring Indigenous community-based ways of knowing into dialogue…

In this paper, the author talks about some of the issues of the beginnings of Native and Indigenous studies and suggests that one looks more precisely at what people mean when they talk about those beginnings. The author is not a big fan of Native people emerging vaguely from the mists of time, but he is always tracing a history of Native studies…

Linda Lomahaftewa, a noted painter, has taught at much bigger places than the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA). But Lomahaftewa, who is Hopi-Choctaw, and others on the faculty of IAIA are intensely devoted to the mission of this small but unique school. IAIA--the nation's only four-year fine arts institution devoted to American Indian and…

In this article, the author shares his comments on the past, present, and future of the American Indian Studies Center (AISC). He discusses how AISC was established and describes how American Indian studies have come a long way from the neglect and disparagement of Native Americans in the way American history is written and taught. He also…

It has long been a matter of concern that Indigenous students, as a group, do less well educationally than their non-Indigenous counterparts. Despite the evidence to support the fact that if students and their cultures are not acknowledged, they tend to be less engaged in schooling than those students whose cultures are presented as the norm.…

The field of Native American studies was invented during the 1960s, a product of the Red Power civil rights movement, which is to suggest that it shares an origin story with ethnic studies in general. The field was at the center of the ethnic studies movement, and it radically transformed how Native peoples and cultures were studied. The author…