The Intersections of Native Women Faculty and Students in Higher Education

• In Event: Toward Mentoring, Solidarity, and Equality: Faculty Women of Color in Higher Education

Abstract

We have witnessed that more Native women are present in the academy than ever before, with a four-fold increase in the number of Indigenous women earning master’s and doctoral degrees in the last 30 years (DeVoe, Darling-Churchill, & Snyder, 2008). Native women are utilizing scholarship as a form of activism, resistance, and empowerment, forging their own paths and creating counter spaces within the academy. Despite the marked increase in participation of Native women in higher education, the scholarship remains virtually silent on this topic. While some scholars have initiated conversations on the experiences of Native women in higher education (Evans, 1994; Shotton, 2008; White Shield, 2009), little is understood about how Native women encounter the academy. Furthermore, our fifth panelist draws on Crenshaw’s (1991) approach on “focusing on the intersections of race and gender…and the need to account for multiple grounds of identity when considering how the social world is constructed (p. 1245),” especially the world of U.S. higher education. The scholarship has yet to fully address how Native women make meaning of their experiences, or document the narratives of contemporary Native women in academic settings. For example, Native women scholars must engage with issues of race and gender to support all students--Black, Latino/a, Asian, and Queer--in addition to our own distinct intersectionality. The increased participation of Native women in higher education demands our attention and research is necessary to support this population. This presentation will also draw on our fifth panelist’s collaborative research with other Native women scholars in higher education.

Author

• Stephanie J. Waterman, University of Toronto