Teaching Native American Religious Traditions: Missing Persons and Silent Scripts

Abstract

Teaching Native American Religious Traditions:Missing Persons and Silent Scripts Mary C. Churchill (bio) I thank Melanie Harris, Carolyn Medine, and Helen Rhee for inviting me to participate in this roundtable because it mirrors for new and established women of color faculty the daily reality of teaching at US colleges and universities and because it mentors women students of color on the battles they will likely face in a potential career in the professoriate. As a scholar of Cherokee descent who teaches about American Indian religious traditions, I believe that in this mirroring and mentoring we must also consider the experiences of American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN)1 women scholars as well as the silent scripts that affect teaching about Native American religious traditions in the classroom. Sadly, American Indian women in academia are a rarity, and relatively few can be found in religious studies. In fall 2013, AI/AN professors in all fields comprised less than 1 percent of all full-time faculty in degree-granting postsecondary institutions.2 Out of the 791,391 full-time faculty employed that semester, only 1,802 (.23%) identified as AI/AN women.3 If membership in the American Academy of Religion (AAR) is any indication, AI/AN faculty members constitute only .32 percent of the field. According to Aislinn Jones, AAR’s director of membership and communications, the “AAR has had 155 Native American/Native Alaskan members identify themselves over time. AAR has only asked this demographic question in the past 20 years and there have been data gaps during that time. There are 29 American Indian/Native Alaskan current [2015] members.”4 The only AAR study of the professoriate that included race or ethnicity found that in 2002–2003 AI/AN professors [End Page 126] (regardless of gender) comprised .03 percent of faculty in doctorate-granting programs.5 The total number of Native faculty in the study? Four. Native women faculty members are therefore paradoxically invisible and too visible: small numbers translate into limited professional power as well as little anonymity when it comes to reflecting on working conditions. In order to protect the anonymity of the few AI/AN women faculty in the field, I have instead turned to the literature on Native women faculty in general for insights into their experiences. Not surprisingly, the research on AI/AN professors in general remains limited, and little of it focuses on women in particular. Low numbers of American Indians in academia lead to their further obscurity as studies, even those issued by the federal government, fail to report on AI/AN faculty or combine their numbers with those of other small groups. American Indian women faculty are, in effect, “missing persons,” not only in the academy but also in studies that would report on them. We must look to small studies of and individual accounts by Native American women faculty. These sources echo the experiences and concerns of other women of color faculty that Harris, Medine, and Rhee discuss. In a study of ten American Indian women professors, Mary Jo Tippeconnic Fox has reported that “several Native women faculty in this study express feelings of isolation as the only person of color in their department, being treated as ‘tokens,’ feeling their research is undervalued, struggling to find mentors, trying to balance demands, having to go outside their department for intellectual support, and experiencing racial/ethnic and gender bias.”6 These experiences of discrimination and alienation can be found throughout the professional lives of many Native women faculty, beginning in graduate school. Tippeconnic Fox interviewed thirteen American Indian women who earned doctorates between 2003 and 2008 and found that they experienced “instances of overt and covert acts of gender bias, racism, discrimination, stereotypes, hostility, and exclusion in their doctoral programs. In addition, the women felt that their cultural traditions and tribal backgrounds were not respected, and the academy wanted them to change.”7 At the assistant professor level, Jeanne Lacourt, a Menominee Indian scholar, has written publically about her experiences at a large state university. In pressing for change at her institution, she discovered that, in her words, “Indigenous women are not valued (or wanted) [End Page 127] here, especially...