Who Stole Native American Studies?

Abstract

ofordays in March 1970, American Indian scholars met at the First Convocation of American Indian Scholars at Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, thousands of miles away from the homelands of the western Indians who dominated the meeting. This convocation brought together scholars, professional people, artists, and traditional historians and billed itself as the first convocation to proclaim that the academic intention of U.S. colleges and universities was to use education to affect the policy of this nation in Indian affairs. It called for the development by Indians of bodies of indigenous knowledge, and it called that development Native American Studies as an Academic Discipline. Its major thrust was the defense of the land; and indigenous rights. Several of the speakers at this convocation said, iwe cannot defend our languages and cultures if we cannot defend our homelands. 0 This milestone event set the agenda for strategy discussions that would bring about a change in the way life in America was stud3 ied. The main aim of these discussions was to assert that Indians were not just the inheritors of trauma but were also the heirs to vast legacies of knowledge about this continent and the universe that had been ignored in the larger picture of European invasion and education. Dr.; Alfonso Ortiz had just written and published in 1969 his classic work in anthropology, Being and Becoming in a Pueblo Society, and Dr. N. Scott Momaday, Kiowa, had just received the Pulitzer Prize for his novel