Calling Cards: Theory and Practice in the Study of Race, Gender, and Culture

Chapter 3: Transforming Images: The Scholarship of American Indian Women

Chapter 3 Transforming Images THE SCHOLARSHIP OF AMERICAN INDIAN WOMEN Susan Applegate Krouse INTRODUCTION What is the image of American Indian women that students in our classrooms have? Very likely they have no image of Native women— there are only 2.8 million Indian people total in the United States—less than one percent of the total U.S. population. Our students have likely never had an Indian woman as a teacher, or as a professor. Indian women, and Indian people in general, are not well represented in academia. When we come calling in academia, our cards are not even recognizable by most of the people in the college or university setting. My own research and teaching focus on American Indian women, particularly women in urban Indian communities. I want to draw attention to the lives of Indian women, and to the roles they play in their communities, as mothers, teachers, activists, and leaders. I use narratives of American Indian women in my teaching, to help my students to experience the lives of those women and expand their understanding of the diversity of Native communities and cultures in North America. We need to move beyond just recounting narratives, however, to change the limited perceptions of American Indian women. A small group of Native women academics has begun to undertake the task of critical 47 48 Susan Applegate Krouse analysis of the lives and roles of American Indian women in their communities . I want my students to read the narratives of Indian women, but I also want them to recognize and understand the theoretical frameworks in which those narratives are created and examined. INDIANS IN ACADEMIA If asked to name an American Indian woman, most students would probably be able to respond with Pocahontas, or possibly Sacajewea. Both are historical figures, from what students probably see as the distant past. They also both acted as intermediaries for Europeans and Americans—Pocahontas interceding for the Jamestown colonists, and Sacajewea guiding Lewis and Clark through territory in what is now the northwest United States. They represent the two images of Indian women that predominate in the larger society, Pocahontas as the “princess” and Sacajewea as the “squaw.” The reality of Indian women in the United States is different from this image, more complex and inherently more interesting. Of the approximately 2.8 million Indians in the United States (as of the 2000 census), some 1.5 million are Indian women. They are from five hundred nations, tribes, bands, communities, and urban areas. There are many more mixed bloods than full bloods. The population is young, with more than one-third under the age of eighteen (Pavel et al. 67). The average Indian family income is lower than that of the general population. In 1990, only 66 percent of Indian people had a high school degree, and only 9 percent had a college degree. Even fewer, only 3 percent, have a graduate or professional degree (Pavel et al. 68). Nonetheless, many Indian people hold positions of tremendous responsibility in their communities, even without advanced degrees or even formal education, serving as tribal chairs, directors of economic development , educational coordinators, language specialists, counselors, and spiritual leaders. Indian people work in the larger society as well, in professional and technical capacities, at skilled and unskilled jobs. Indian people are an even smaller percentage of the population in academia. According to statistics from the 2001–2 Almanac Issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education, Indians make up less than 1 percent of the total number of college students. That number has increased dramatically in the last twenty years, from 83,000 American Indian college students in 1980 to 145,300 in 1999 (“College Enrollment by Racial and Ethnic Group. Selected Years” 20). In 1999, Indians received less than 1 percent of the total number of advanced degrees awarded, most of them in education, the social sciences, or the professions, such as law 49 Transforming Images and medicine (“Characteristics of Recipients of Doctorates, 1999” 24). In 1997, Indians made up less than one-half of 1 percent of the total full-time faculty, and only about one-third of those Indian faculty held ranks above assistant professor (“Number of Full-Time Faculty Members by Sex, Rank, and Racial and Ethnic Group, Fall 1997” 28). At my own university, there are only five American Indian women faculty, including myself, and none of us are tenured—yet. Without...