Mixed Race Studies

“I Got Indian in my Family”~A Discussion on Indian Identity

Mixed Race Radio
2013-01-23, 17:00Z (12:00 EST)

Tiffany Rae Reid, Host

Dwanna L. Robertson
University of Massachusetts, Amherst

On today’s episode of Mixed Race Radio we will speak with Dwanna L. Robertson and discuss issues of Identity: What does it mean to be Indian in today’s society?

Dwanna is a citizen of the Muscogee Creek Nation of Oklahoma, a public sociologist, an Indigenous rights advocate, and a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst having earned with two prior master’s degrees—an MBA and a Master of Science in Sociology.

Currently, she represents over 2600+ graduate students of color as the appointed ALANA (African-, Latin-, Asian-, and Native-American) – graduate student representative for the Faculty Senate Council Committee on the Status of Diversity for UMass-Amherst.

Dwanna writes for Indian Country Today Media Network and speaks (by invitation) at universities and other organizations and forums about the complexities of Indigenous identity in the United States.

Dwanna has authored or co-authored pieces in American Indian Culture and Research Journal, European Sociological Review, Research in the Sociology of Work, and Oxford Encyclopedia of American Business, Labor, and Economic History. Her research focuses on the reproduction of social inequality, particularly for American Indians. Her current project examines the problematic processes around American Indian identity within the structures of public policy and the media.

Dwanna will share her expertise with us while educating our listeners on the federal government’s approach to many issues, old and new.

For more information, click here.

Canada’s First Nations: Time we stopped meeting like this

The Economist
2013-01-19

Protests by native peoples pose awkward questions for their leaders, and for Stephen Harper’s government

Back in the 18th century British and French settlers in what is now Canada secured peace with the indigenous inhabitants by negotiating treaties under which the locals agreed to share their land in return for promises of support from the newcomers. This practice continued after Canada became self-governing in 1867. These treaty rights were incorporated into the 1982 constitution. The Supreme Court has since said they impose on the federal government “a duty to consult” the First Nations (as the locals’ descendants prefer to be called) before making any changes that impinge on their treaty rights.

The Assembly of First Nations, which represents about 300,000 people living in 615 different reserves, reckons Stephen Harper’s Conservative government has broken the bargain. In protests over the past month they have blocked roads and railways, staged impromptu dances in shopping malls and chanted outside the office of the prime minister. Theresa Spence, a Cree chief from a troubled reserve in northern Ontario, has taken up residence in a tepee near the parliament buildings in Ottawa, and has refused solid food since December 11th…

…Mr Harper got off to a promising start with the First Nations and Canada’s other aboriginal groups, the mixed-race Métis and the Arctic Inuit, when he issued an apology in June 2008 for the treatment their children had suffered in residential schools (they were separated from their families and often abused). The prime minister promised a new relationship based on “collective reconciliation and fundamental changes”…

Read the entire article here.

Opinion: Black Americans must embrace true colors

In America: You define America. What defines you?
Cable News Network (CNN)
2012-12-15

Tiya Miles, Professor of American Culture, Afroamerican and African Studies, and Native American Studies
University of Michigan

Editor’s note: Historian and author Tiya Miles is a professor at the University of Michigan’s Afroamerican and African Studies department and a 2011 MacArthur genius award recipient.

(CNN) – In the documentary film “Black Indians,” a man who appears to be African-American recounts his delight at eliciting shocked looks from strangers when he launches into a conversation with his wife in the Cherokee language.

The man who tells this story is Cherokee as well as black and a member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. His is just one among thousands of examples that show diversity has always been a core aspect of African-American identity.

That diversity has been rich – from the moment when Africans from different tribes, cultures and language groups were captured as slaves and transported to North America to the present day, when African-Americans live in various regions and intermarry with members of other ethnic groups.

The evidence of this diversity is so obvious that it may seem at times invisible.

Read the entire opinion piece here…

Cogewea, The Half Blood: A Depiction of the Great Montana Cattle Range

University of Nebraska Press
1981 (originally published in 1927)
302 pages
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-8032-8110-3
Hardback ISBN: 978-0-8032-3069-9

Mourning Dove (Humishuma) (1888-1936)
Introduction by Dexter Fisher (Cirillo)

One of the first known novels by a Native American woman, Cogewea (1927) is the story of a half-blood girl caught between the worlds of Anglo ranchers and full-blood reservation Indians; between the craven and false-hearted easterner Alfred Densmore and James LaGrinder, a half-blood cowboy and the best rider on the Flathead; between book learning and the folk wisdom of her full-blood grandmother. The book combines authentic Indian lore with the circumstance and dialogue of a popular romance; in its language, it shows a self-taught writer attempting to come to terms with the rift between formal written style and the comfort-able rhythms and slang of familiar speech.

An Eagle Eye in Harlem

narratively: Local. Original. Organic. In-Depth.
2012-12-10

Jenni Monet

From Malcolm X Boulevard to pow-wow road trips, a black man from Georgia adopts a Cherokee persona despite questionable ties to any Native American roots.

Robert Banks’ one-bedroom flat is lavishly decorated with Native American artwork—sculptures and dreamcatchers that the 71-year-old Georgia native created himself. On his kitchen cupboards are hand-painted feathers with tips of burnt-orange. A grand self-portrait hangs above Banks’ dark green velvet couch, where he often sifts through pictures of his past—a family he says descends from Cherokee Indians…

Produced, shot and edited by Jenni Monet, a multimedia journalist telling stories about NYC, Native Americans and the Indigenous.

ANTH 206 American Indian Societies (FOLK 230)

University of North Carolina
Summer 2013

Why do American Indians have casinos and reservations? Who is an Indian? How do Indians feel about American history? What kinds of futures do young Indians imagine for themselves and their tribes, and how can a non-Indian participate in and contribute to building this future? Prepare for a great ride through the vigorous discussions and debates we have about these and other topics in this perspective-expanding and critical-thinking-oriented Maymester class. Through films, readings, and class discussions, students will learn about the histories of Indian tribes and about U.S. history from the perspectives of American Indians. They will also explore tribal sovereignty, reservation life, tribal leaders, Indian education, black Indians, Indian art, Indian participation in sports, and other topics in which students express interest. Classes will be discussion-based. Students will be encouraged to think critically and imaginatively in a class setting that is relaxed and informal, and the instructor’s primary motivational techniques will be positive reinforcement and encouragement. No prior study of American Indians is required.

For more information, click here.

The Chalk Circle: Intercultural Prizewinning Essays

Wyatt-MacKenzie Publishing
2012-05-15
220 pages
5 x 8
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-936214-71-6

Tara L. Masih, Writer & Editor

Award-winning editor Tara L. Masih put out a call in 2007 for Intercultural Essays dealing with the subjects of “culture, race, and a sense of place.” The prizewinners are gathered for the first time in a ground-breaking anthology that explores many facets of culture not previously found under one cover. The powerful, honest, thoughtful voices—Native American, African American, Asian, European, Jewish, White—speak daringly on topics not often discussed in the open, on subjects such as racism, anti-Semitism, war, self-identity, gender, societal expectations. Their words will entertain, illuminate, take you to distant lands, and spark important discussions about our humanity, our culture, and our place within society and the natural world.

• Winner of a 2012 Skipping Stones Honor Award
• A Featured NewPages.com New & Noteworthy Book, February 2012
• An Amazon Hot New Release, debuting at #2 on the essay bestseller list

Table of Contents

• Foreword by Tara L. Masih
• Introduction by David Mura
• THE CHALK CIRCLE: IDENTITY, HOME, AND BORDERLANDS
  • If Grandmother Had Married a Peasant Li Miao Lovett
  • Fragments: Finding Center Sarah J. Stoner
  • Giiwe: go home Christine Stark
• AS I AM: LETTERS OF IDENTITY
  • Bufferhood: An Autoethnography Emma Sartwell
  • Valentine and This Difficult World Tilia Klebenov Jacobs
• THE TONGUE OF WAR: A CLASH OF CULTURES
  • Reflecting on Dragons and Angels Shanti Elke Bannwart
  • Tongue-Tied Kelly Hayes-Raitt
  • Tightrope Across the Abyss Shanti Elke Bannwart
• THE TRAGEDY OF THE COLOR LINE
  • A Dash of Pepper in the Snow Samuel Autman
  • “Miss Otis Regrets” Mary Elizabeth Parker
  • Signatures Lyzette Wanzer
• EYEWITNESS: AS SEEN BY ANOTHER
  • Winter Seagull Toshi Washizu
  • Itam Jeff Fearnside
  • High Tech in Gaborone M. Garrett Bauman
  • Triptych: Paradise Gretchen Brown Wright
• THE OTHER
  • Assailing Otherness Katrina Grigg-Saito
  • Fried Locusts Kamela Jordan
  • Israel: Devour the Darling Plagues Bonnie J. Morris
• THE CULTURE OF SELF AND SPIRIT
  • Connections Betty Jo Goddard
  • Palo del Muerte Simmons B. Buntin
• QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
  • Intercultural Considerations
  • Intercultural Connections
  • Quotation Exploration
• About the Editor, Tara L. Masih
• Acknowledgments
• About the Introduction Author, David Mura
• Index of Contributors

U-M’s Understanding Race Project examines issues at heart of the human experience, advances national conversation on race

University of Michigan
News Release
2012-12-19

Contacts:

Frank Provenzano, (734) 647-4411
Maryanne George, (734) 615-6514
Deborah Greene, (734) 763-4008

Twitter hashtags: #UnderstandRace, #UMtheme

 
ANN ARBOR—Few subjects provoke as strong a visceral response as the topic of race. One-hundred-and-fifty years after the United States was nearly fractured by the battle over slavery and more than a half-century since the modern Civil Rights Movement emerged, the University of Michigan is launching the Understanding Race Project.
 
From January through April, an extensive range of public exhibits, performances, lectures, symposia and more than 130 courses in several disciplines will explore the concept of race and its impacts. The historical, cultural, psychological and legal interpretations of race will be examined from both national and global perspectives.
 
Highlights of the project include the “Race: Are We So Different?” exhibit developed by the American Anthropological Association and the Science Museum of Minnesota and “IndiVisible: African-Native American Lives in the Americas,” a Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibit.
 
Morris Dees, co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center; Angela Davis, educator and civil rights activist; and Cory Booker, mayor of Newark, N.J., are among the dozens of lecturers speaking at U-M as part of the project…

…JANUARY EVENT HIGHLIGHTS
 
WHAT: IndiVisible: African-Native American Lives in the Americas, a Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibit

WHEN: Jan. 9-31

DESCRIPTION: The story of people who share African American and Native American ancestry has long been invisible. For 500 years or more, African American and Native people have come together, creating shared histories, communities and ways of life. Often divided by prejudice, laws or twists of history, African-Native Americans are united by a double heritage that is truly indivisible.

WHERE: Duderstadt Center Gallery on U-M’s North Campus, 2281 Bonisteel Blvd., Ann Arbor. The gallery is open Noon-6 p.m. Monday through Friday, and Noon-5 p.m. on Sundays. The gallery will be open from Noon-6 p.m. on Martin Luther King Day.
 
WHAT: “Identities in Red, Black and White: A Roundtable Discussion”

WHEN:  4-6 p.m. Jan. 10

DESCRIPTION: This public program will address mixed-race identities from autobiographical and storytelling perspectives and within the context of social and cultural analysis.

EXPERTS: Roundtable panelists express a mixed native identity of some kind—whether that connection is via family ties and/or cultural ties, including:

• Tiya Miles, U-M professor of Afroamerican and African studies and Native American studies
• Adesola Akinleye, dance scholar and founder of Dancing Strong
• Elizabeth Atkins, U-M alumna and Detroit-based best-selling novelist and journalist
• Robert Keith Collins, assistant professor of American Indian Studies at San Francisco State University.
• Philip Deloria, U-M professor of history, American culture, and Native American studies

For more information, click here.

Association of Contextual Factors with Drug Use and Binge Drinking among White, Native American, and Mixed-Race Adolescents in the General Population

Journal of Youth and Adolescence
Volume 41, Issue 11 (November 2012)
pages 1426-1441
DOI: 10.1007/s10964-012-9789-0

Hsing-Jung Chen
Department of Social Work
Fu-Jen Catholic University, New Taipei City, Taiwan

Sundari Balan, Postdoctoral Research Associate
Department of Psychiatry
Washington University in St. Louis

Rumi Kato Price, Research Professor
Department of Psychiatry
Washington University in St. Louis

Large-scale surveys have shown elevated risk for many indicators of substance abuse among Native American and Mixed-Race adolescents compared to other minority groups in the United States. This study examined underlying contextual factors associated with substance abuse among a nationally representative sample of White, Native American, and Mixed-Race adolescents 12–17 years of age, using combined datasets from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH 2006–2009, N = 46,675, 48.77% female). Native American adolescents displayed the highest rate of past-month binge drinking and past-year illicit drug use (14.06 and 30.91%, respectively). Results of a logistic regression that included seven predictors of social bonding, individual views of substance use, and delinquent peer affiliations showed that friendships with delinquent peers and negative views of substance use were associated significantly with both substance abuse outcomes among White and Mixed-Race adolescents and, to a lesser extent, Native American adolescents. The association of parental disapproval with binge drinking was stronger for White than for Native American adolescents. Greater attention to specific measures reflecting racial groups’ contextual and historical differences may be needed to delineate mechanisms that discourage substance abuse among at-risk minority adolescent populations.

Read the entire article here.

Debra Yepa-Pappan: Dual(ing) Identities

Museum of Contemporary Native Arts
108 Cathedral Place
Santa Fe, New Mexico
2012-08-17 through 2012-12-31

SmDivine Spirits

This exhibition focuses on Debra Yepa-Pappan’s reflective group of works that explore her dual identities. Yepa-Pappan is of Jemez Pueblo and Korean heritage. Through this multilayered collection of work, Yepa-Pappan layers instances of history, pop culture, stereotypes, authenticity, family, her identity, and the urban environment together. Through her dual identities, she embraces change in tradition as a reflection of herself, yet she also duels with the labels placed upon her.
 
About the Artist: DEBRA YEPA-PAPPAN was born in Korea in 1971 to a Korean mother and Jemez Pueblo father. She came to the U.S. with her mother when she was 5 months old. At this time, she was enrolled as Jemez Pueblo before becoming a U.S. citizen. In her work, Yepa-Pappan shares her experiences of being a mixed-race Asian/Native American living in an urban area, while exploring the issues of identity and challenging American Indian stereotypes. Having spent the majority of her life in Chicago, she is influenced by contemporary and urban culture, along with her deep connection to Jemez Pueblo. Because of her parents and their own strong ties to their cultures, she has a strong sense of self. She says, “I know who I am and where my people come from.” Yepa-Pappan attended the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe and graduated with an Associates of Fine Arts in two- and three-dimensional art in 1992…

For more information, click here.