From Sovereignty to Minority: As American as Apple Pie

Abstract

I find myself in an unusual situation, having just recently been denied reappointment as director of the American Indian Studies Center at UCLA. Certainly, that experience motivated the editor, Lee Francis, to call and ask me to write a personal story about my experiences with American Indian studies in general, but, more specifically, to write about the recent trend toward submerging American Indian studies into ethnic studies programs, or sometimes anthropology departments, American studies or other units or departments. To be sure, in many cases, the drive to fold American Indian studies into ethnic studies is generated by organizational or financial concerns. Nevertheless, the easy, or apparently natural, placement of Native studies into ethnic studies, or other interdisciplinary arrangements, submerges the study of indigenous peoples into mainstream academic orientations and understandings. Most universities manage relations with Native peoples as if they are minorities and group them with ethnic studies for administrative purposes. Universities and colleges are state or private institutions and do not honor treaties and laws upholding Native rights, which is largely a federal government obligation. According to treaties and federal Indian law, many Native peoples have rights to land, resources, selfgovernment, and the practice of their religions and cultures.' Ethnic groups in the United States do not have similar rights. Most have stories of traveling from their old countries and settling in the United States 0 N