Old School?

This generation of Indians now coming to power shows a strange alienation from the community setting. For all the talk about the grass roots and reverence of elders, we see very little concern for the people on the homelands. Everyone is proud to claim a tribal heritage, but many times it appears not as a commitment but as a status symbol of "Indianness."

Vine Deloria Jr., "Intellectual Self-Determination and Sovereignty," Wicazo Sa Review,28

The Negro is a slave who has been allowed to assume the attitude of a master.
The white man is a master who has allowed his slaves to eat at his table.

Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks,219

If it is important that you be able to use your academic appointment as leverage for grassroots activism, to shift public consciousness about Native American issues, and to work for social justice, my experience may help you. Likewise, my experience might be informative if your activism intertwines with Native communities (outside of academia and includes more than just your personal family) and is grounded on cultural/spiritual practice. Jace Weaver's term "communitist" aptly describes this perspective: an active commitment to the Native community where the community stands at the center and the goal is to build, heal, and strengthen the community.¹ Here are some of the lessons learned from my nightmare tenure review experience:

1. Make sure you are in a department with other tenure-track faculty who are interested in, and committed to, "the struggle"—who also understand that it is often necessary to stand up for what is right. You cannot do it alone, and you may be committing academic suicide trying to go it alone in a department where the other faculty cannot or will not confront the powers that be for change. What may happen is that your actions, including your teaching, shake the existing faculty to see their own complacency and lack of "tribal" connections so that they try to eliminate you rather than deal with their own status quo principles or the need for progressive social change. They may turn on you, even if you just leave them alone and never, ever ask them what in the world they are doing in a Native American studies (NAS) program.

2. Inquire among your prospective faculty colleagues if they think that the decolonization of Native peoples is a significant issue today. If they do not understand the question, be very wary. Does the faculty teach concepts such as race privilege? I walked onto a faculty that seemed oblivious to the word "phenotype" and were not incorporating "color privilege" into their teaching. For them, Native peoples are Native peoples; there appeared to be little consciousness of how physical appearance can privilege some Indians over others, just as it can privilege Euroamericans over Indians in our race conscious culture. It may seem absurd that NAS scholars would fail to center such a grassroots concept (that is, one that floats in, and infects, the atmosphere in Native communities, although it may not be consciously confronted), but it is happening. Below, I will offer a theory as to why some faculty may be sidestepping the issue.

3. Find out if your potential colleagues are involved in Native communities and cultural and spiritual activities. If they do not ground their academic work in these areas and you do, just the fact of your doing so may scare them. Once again, your principles and actions alone may threaten them. Threats to our identity (and in NAS this can spill over into job security if faculty members have autopiloted their own careers based on their Certificate Degree of Indian Blood [CDIB] cards/white authority privilege) may prompt us to do some introspection and personal growth, but they may also trigger that Darwinian impulse to eliminate the threat. If the latter response kicks in, you may be in trouble.

4. Are the senior NAS faculty entrenched? Have they been there forever and are now a part...