Is a Native American studies minor possible?
Diversity studies may have gained traction in the academic sphere in recent years, but not everyone on campus feels included.
by CHRISTOPHER DIMAS
At the University of Maryland, there is a major for African American studies. There are minors for black women’s studies, Asian American studies and U.S. Latino/a studies. But the campus still does not offer so much as a minor for Native American and indigenous studies.
“Even though there’s not a lot of physically Native American people on campus, there might be a lot of people who are interested in Native American culture and Native American issues,” said Kimberly Whitley, president of the American Indian Student Union.
In the most recent enrollment report by Forbes, University of Maryland has a 0.12 percent American Indian and Alaskan native student enrollment rate, and a 3.59 enrollment rate of students identifying as two or more races. According to Naliyah Kaya, the coordinator for multiracial and Native American Indian student involvement on campus, many Native American students identify as multiracial, muddling the statistics somewhat.
At the University of Montana, the American Indian and Alaskan native enrollment is only 2.94 percent. But the school offers both an undergraduate major and minor in Native American studies.
Kaya partially blames ignorance for the lack of support at Maryland.
“I’ve often heard people say ‘Oh, I didn’t even know there were native students here,’ or ‘Oh, I didn’t know native people existed,’” Kaya said. “So that’s a huge issue.”
But with such a limited population of Native American students on campus, it can be difficult to justify the cost of implementing a new minor based around them, she says.
“I think it’s hard when you have a small population to get a lot of backing,” Kaya said. “I think it’s easy for institutions to say ‘Hey, we have to serve the larger populations on campus.’”
The potential issues the minor would cover have a wide scope of intersections with other academic fields. Whitley expressed that there were topics of health and racial issues on some reservations, some of which she described as the equivalent of third world countries.
“I think it’s easy for institutions to say ‘Hey, we have to serve the larger populations on campus.’”
Courses span from the anthropology department to the political science department atStanford University’s Native American studies major and minor programs, where about 0.2 percent of students identify as American Indian. There, an estimated 13 to 20 students with declared majors and minors explore “how academic knowledge about Native Americans relates to the historical and contemporary experiences of Native American people and communities,” according to the program’s website. Substantially more students enroll in classes without joining the program, according to University of Richmond professor emeritus Robert Nelson’s report of Native American studies programs across the country.
At Maryland, the Native American studies minor has been in development for around six years now, with an American Indian Student Union-created petition and rally and an SGA resolution kickstarting the push in the spring of 2009. The proposal received support from former Provost Nariman Farvardin, according to the program’s website.
Soon after Mary Ann Rankin replaced Farvardin in 2012, however, the effort slowed down and shifted to drawing students to courses related to Native American studies already being offered. This semester, such courses include AMST498L, “Native Americans and U.S. Cinema,” and HIST429C, “Race and the Public Memory.”
The push for the minor seems to be on the back burner for now, though the desire to see the minor added remains.
“I think that even though we’re a small community, it’s important to acknowledge that we have Native American students here. As a native, you don’t see many representations of your culture,” said Whitley.
For now, though, the American Indian Student Union has focused its efforts elsewhere. The American Indian Student Union’s latest project is an anti-cultural appropriation campaign, seeking to raise awareness about the harm done by cultural appropriation, just in time for Halloween.
“I don’t feel like right now the students think it’s something that’s even going to happen…not that they don’t want it to, I think they just don’t even see it as being something that’s viable at the moment,” said Kaya.
But the possibility of a Native American studies minor isn’t off the table completely.
“If we really want to make change, we can’t be all cornered off in our own groups,” Kaya said. “We have to have unity and solidarity. Your issue has to matter to me, my issue has to matter to you.”
Christopher Dimas is a contributing writer at Plex. He studies journalism at the University of Maryland and covers the intersection of Latin@ and geek culture.
