"Ethnic" Assimilates "Indigenous": A Study in Intellectual Neocolonialism

Abstract

n 1994 various faculty members at the University of British Columbia considered establishing an Ethnic Studies department. As part of their study they invited academics representing four minority groups to make public addresses on the pros and cons of this prospect. As a current faculty member of a Native Studies department and a recent Ph.D. student in the Ethnic Studies Department at the University of California at Berkeley, I was invited to present a paper on the relations between Ethnic Studies and Native Studies on university campuses. ' In accepting the invitation I let the organizer, Professor Margery s Fee, know that I was not a proponent of Ethnic Studies-Native Ameri; can Studies collaboration and that she might want to rethink the invitation. The invitation held, and this essay is the result. As the title suggests, experience convinces me that Native Studo ies does not belong under the rubric of Ethnic Studies, that when Native Studies is housed under Ethnic Studies, there is always the poten5 33 tial for unbalanced power relations to develop between the dominant ethnic majority and Native People. These unbalanced power relations result in the marginalization, silencing, and exploitation of issues unique to Indigenous peoples. The marginalization of Native American Studies in Ethnic Studies departments was never intended when these departments were first established-it evolved, over time, out of a combination of political