Negotiating Gender and Vestiges of Colonization as a Female Native American Faculty Member

• In Event: Pathways to Success in Academia: Experiences of Women of Color in a College of Education

Abstract

Purpose:
This presentation identifies and examines the struggle and pathway engaged by the researcher, a Tsalagi woman (enrolled member of Cherokee Nation), in the negotiation of her work and presence in a higher education institution as a Native woman who makes sense of the educational terrain in response to her culture, history, and conceptualization of education for the Native community and its students. Her work centers on community and creating a space for community voice, developing community strengths, and fostering decolonization efforts for Native educational contexts to uphold sovereignty; however, academia focuses on individualism, narrowly defines “community” and defines “diversity” in ways which maintains the status quo.

Theoretical Framework:
The primary overarching tenet within Tribal Critical Race Theory (TribalCrit) is the endemic nature of colonization and its processes in society. TribalCrit examines the issues of Indigenous People in relationship to the U.S. and its laws and policies in both historical and contemporary contexts because colonization’s effects exist within the continuum of time. Colonization continues to render Native people, including Native faculty, and their cultural continuance invisible in the policies and practices of higher education institutions, thus, TribalCrit offers “the possibility of unmasking, exposing, and confronting continued colonization within educational contexts and societal structures, thus, transforming those contexts and structures for Indigenous Peoples” (Haynes Writer, 2008, p. 2). Of TribalCrit’s nine tenets (Brayboy, 2005), the researcher specifically highlights three in her work here: the endemic nature of colonization, stories as theory, and work toward social change.

Modes of Inquiry and Data Sources:
To provide a counterstory to the institution’s grand narrative of “diversity” and “inclusion”, the researcher makes meaning of her experiences within her 15 years of faculty work at her institution and utilizes professional documents (university reports, university memos, e-mails, and her promotion and tenure documents) to identify specifically poignant and illustrative examples of oppression or obstacles to her participation in academia as a Native woman. These examples are woven into her story to name the vestiges of colonization as per TribalCrit.

Warrants for Arguments/Point of View:
Seldom does the literature of women in academia include the voices of Native women faculty members. By including the voices of Native women, specifically through this researcher’s counterstory, “diversity” is expanded and vestiges of colonization are identified and critiqued, which offers the potential to open the institution’s doors to recruit and retain other Native women.

Scholarly Significance:
Although, the westernized educational system has historically and contemporarily positioned Native students and communities within the purview of deficit thinking, and women faculty members have been expected to fit into the male faculty mold, the cultural knowledge, beliefs, practices, and ways of being that female Native American faculty members personify is not a deficit or “atypical” but instead provides ways in which to enhance the higher education institution’s effectiveness for and service to multiple diverse communities.

Author

• Jeanette Haynes Writer, New Mexico State University