Many Indian communities do not feel that universities and academia are friendly institutions, although there are some individual academics who enjoy often friendly and mutually satisfying relations between service and research with a community. Universities, however, are often seen as distant and focused on mainstream issues.
Vine Deloria wrote a well-known critique of anthropologists in ”Custer Died for Your Sins.” He advocated that anthropologists join church and tribal leaders to pursue political pressure in Washington to help alleviate critical social and economic issues confronting tribal communities. Deloria’s criticism seemed to have the opposite effect than he intended. Instead of rallying anthropologists, and academics more generally, to make their research more relevant to contemporary Indian issues, almost an entire generation of anthropologists abandoned the North American field and went to study in other parts of the world. As subject matter, American Indians living on contemporary reservations were not popular and many anthropologists felt unwanted in Indian communities.
In recent years, a newer generation of anthropologists and academics are more concerned with American Indian issues and are willing to develop research ethics that give back to tribal communities. Nevertheless, it is hard to say there is a coherent American Indian perspective upheld in most college and university American Indian studies programs.
Since the late 1960s, over 100 American Indian studies departments and programs have been started at colleges and universities. In some cases, the American Indian studies programs were created by protest efforts by students, communities and faculty. The approach was to create courses about American Indians, focus research on American Indian communities and their contemporary issues, educate Native students about policy and history, and encourage employment and research among American Indian faculty.
For some, American Indian studies is the study of Indian policy and engagement in the protection of tribal sovereignty and cultural autonomy. For others, American Indian studies is about the ways in which tribal communities have worked to survive, mobilize and renew their communities within the contemporary policy context of self-determination. However, only a few years ago, Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, Lakota scholar, wrote the article, ”Who Stole American Indian Studies?” indicating that American Indian studies programs and departments were not carrying out their missions.
Most American Indian studies programs and departments are composed of multi-disciplinary faculty who are brought together to teach courses about American Indians. This method is very cost effective for universities and colleges, which feel an obligation to cover American Indian issues as part of policies offering courses to students for diversity requirements.
Often American Indian studies is associated with ethnic studies programs, and is seen as a derivative discipline, borrowing ideas from mainstream academic disciplines. Ethnic studies are about the study of immigration and assimilation into American society. Immigrants come to America for economic opportunities and political and cultural freedom, and accept the rights and obligations of citizenship and work within the cultural system and values of American society. University administrations see ethnic studies as fulfilling national and state policies of assimilation, diversity and multi-cultural education. In the multi-disciplinary framework, American Indian studies are seen to fulfill similar purposes as ethnic studies programs. The multi-disciplinary character of most American Indian studies programs tends to inhibit the formation of a coherent American Indian studies perspective, and tends to privilege the intellectual views and interests of mainstream academic disciplines, interests and values.
American Indian studies should serve the interests, values and policies of Native communities. Among the over 100 American Indian studies programs, perhaps only a few fulfill the purposes of centering on and supporting efforts by tribal communities to preserve and renew culture, community, government and build long term sustainable futures.
When American Indian studies faculty engage in research and teaching that focuses on tribal sovereignty, nation building or cultural renewal, they are often seen as outside contemporary disciplines and university policies. Too much emphasis on researching and supporting tribal goals of cultural and political autonomy is seen as more political than academic. Although the generation of academic knowledge at universities is about supporting and engaging central cultural, political, economic and social issues that confront American and Western society, American Indian studies is not granted similar leeway. American Indian studies should engage research and teaching that focuses on and addresses central issues and concerns confronting Native communities. Like tribal communities that do not share central values and institutions with American society (and are thereby marginalized culturally and politically), American Indian studies programs and faculty, when they focus on the values and interests of trial communities, are also marginalized from the intellectual core and policies of universities and colleges.
Just as some American Indian studies programs and faculty have centered on tribal issues and communities, tribal communities should form partnerships and support the programs and faculty who are working for the well-being of tribal communities. The intellectual perspectives and policy issues of tribal communities should be part of the discourse within a truly intellectually engaged university or college. Indigenous perspectives and knowledge can only strengthen and diversify the academic and intellectual life of academia.
American Indian studies programs and faculty members, who are engaged in research and teaching about the issues that are central to indigenous communities, can help teach students who are capable of understanding tribal cultures, history, Indian policy and who therefore can become better informed tribal as well as national citizens. American universities teach about knowledge generated in American or Western society, and such knowledge, while helpful, cannot be directly transplanted into tribal communities. Without teaching cultural translation and reinterpretation, much university knowledge is not helpful to tribal communities. There is great need for American Indian studies as a separate and coherent academic discipline that focuses research, teaching and community action on tribal cultural issues, needs and values.
