NATIVE LENS A New Framework for American Indian Studies
American Indian Studies has typically been associated with culture, music, art and history. “The courses are often perceived as classes simply about Native peoples,” says Chris Teuton, the literary scholar who came to the UW in 2014 to chair the emerging American Indian Studies Department. “At the UW our courses foreground Native knowledge and Native perspectives on their own histories, cultures, arts, homelands, and forms of governance.” While those working within the field of American Indian and Indigenous studies have long considered Native knowledge and cultures worthy of academic study, academe in general is only now recognizing that Native knowledge may stand on its own intellectual tradition. The new approach for AIS is to study it from within an Indigenous conceptual framework. “What better place to do it than the UW?” asks Teuton, pointing to the strong faculty base and significant resources for exploring and supporting Indigenous research and knowledge. The first efforts for Indian Studies at the UW came in 1970 during a time of student protests about the lack of diversity in courses and the student body. By that fall, the University had an American Indian Studies Center to create courses with faculty in areas like the Burke Museum, English, anthropology, history and political science, and to foster the recruitment and retention of Native students and faculty. For the next few decades AIS existed as a sub-unit in the Department of Anthropology, but in 2009, the program became its own distinct academic department.
A NIL KA PA H I
By Hannelore Sudermann
With six tenured faculty and one principal lecturer at its core—as well as ties to faculty around campus in disciplines including law, international studies, ecology, medicine and art—the department is poised to broaden its approach using a platform of Indigenous knowledge. Teuton, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, does this in his own scholarship, developing ways of studying Indigenous literature through lenses other than the traditional European-style criticisms. As the AIS department chair, Teuton will also guide the programming in the new –Intellectual House. “Now we have this wonderful space,” he says. “It is a hub for the work we do in academics and scholarship, as well as a place to link that knowledge to the community. And we can use the space and our expertise to address the everyday concerns of Native people.” One annual symposium moving to –Intellectual House explores cultural food practices and ecological knowledge. Experts in tribal food sovereignty, traditional foods and health, and climate change seek ways to better serve the region’s Indigenous communities and help them build networks to support sustainable food practices. This is a great time to show the University’s strength in Indigenous studies, says Sheila Edwards Lange, former vice president for minority affairs and vice provost for diversity. With the talented and accomplished American Indian Studies faculty and the great resource of the –Intellectual House, “the University is poised to become a leader nationally.” the story of diversity at the UW
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