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  • Editor’s Commentary
  • James Riding In (bio)

This publication is a special issue by Indigenous feminists. It probes a wide range of issues important to Indigenous studies.

An important development has occurred with Wicazo Sa Review since the last issue’s publication. Tony Clark has resigned as the associate editor and has been replaced by Amy Lonetree, an enrolled citizen of the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin. Her teaching and research interests include Indigenous history, museum studies, visual culture studies, public history and memory, and Ho-Chunk tribal history. In 2002, she received her Ph.D. in ethnic studies from the University of California, Berkeley, where she specialized in Native American history and museum studies. She is a recipient of the UC Berkeley Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellowship for the 2004–2006 academic years, and in fall 2007 she began her current position as an assistant professor of American studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her scholarly work focuses on the representation of Native American history and memory in national and tribal museums, and she has conducted research at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, the British Museum, the Mille Lacs Indian Museum (a tribal museum in Minnesota), and the Ziibiwing Center for Anishinabe Culture and Lifeways in Michigan. She has published articles based on this research in Public Historian, American Indian Quarterly, and Journal of American History and recently completed an edited collection with Amanda J. Cobb, The National Museum of the American Indian: Critical Conversations (University [End Page 5] of Nebraska Press, 2008). Amy is currently working on a manuscript that explores the complexities of the changing historical relationship between Indigenous people and museums, as well as the potential for museums to serve as sites of decolonization.

On February 17, 2009, Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, one of the beloved founders of Wicazo Sa Review, was awarded the 2009 South Dakota Arts Council Living Indian Treasure Award, an honor given annually “in recognition of a Native American Artist living in South Dakota who has contributed to the preservation of excellence in a traditional art form.” The honor, no doubt, is well deserved in addition to her many previous awards, which include the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writer’s Circle of the Americas, the Literary Contribution Award from the Mountain Plains Library Association, the South Dakota Teacher’s Association Author of the Year Award, the Oyate Igluwitaya Award, and the Gustavus Myers Center Award. You inspire us all. Congratulations!

On another note, Jace Weaver sent me an e-mail with a comment regarding my published presidential address at the Ninth Annual American Indian Studies Association conference in Tempe, Arizona. In that talk, I stated that it seems as if the steering committee feels that anyone who writes about Indians is an “American Indian scholar.” Responding to this statement, Weaver wrote:

I read your presidential address in Wicazo Sa, and I just wanted to write and congratulate you. I thought it was excellent. I agree with almost all of it, particularly on AIS/NAS as a discipline. I did have one question about what I assume is a typo or word missing. In the paragraph on NAISA [Native American & Indigenous Studies Association], you state that the steering committee seemed to indicate that all scholars doing anything on Indians were “American Indian scholars.” I assume you meant “American Indian Studies (AIS) scholars.” While I think the six of us do not have a single view on the subject, surely no one would claim that teaching about Indians makes one Indian or conveys that internal community perspective.

I wish to thank Jace for the clarification.

With that said, another issue continues to plague academia: the problem of self-identification. This year, several scholars have been challenged regarding their claims to be Indian. In 1993, the members of the American Indian Professoriate took up this problem and developed [End Page 6] a statement policy to guard against ethnic fraud in the hiring process. They asked universities and colleges to do the following:

  1. 1. Require documentation of enrollment in a state or federally recognized nation/tribe with preference given to those who meet this criterion;

  2. 2. Establish a case-by...

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