custer never would have believed it: native american studies in academia

Custer Never Would Have Believed It: Native American Studies in AcademiaAuthor(s): Terry P. WilsonSource: American Indian Quarterly, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Aug., 1979), pp. 207-227Published by: University of Nebraska PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1183519 .

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Custer Never Would Have Believed It: Native American Studies in Academia

TERRY P. WILSON

University of California, Berkeley

While scanning bibliographies, browsing libraries and bookstores or

thumbing through the book review sections of periodicals, George Arm-

strong Custer's name almost inevitably appears. There has been a con-

tinuing, compelling curiosity about every facet of that nineteenth century soldier's career. Taking into full account his flamboyance of character, much of the persistence of the Custer mystique can be explained in terms of its inextricable link with the cavalryman's chief antagonist, the American Indian. The latter has made Custer, or more specifically his defeat at Little Big Horn, a rallying cry for Indian civil rights and cultural in-

tegrity during the past decade. While bumper stickers displaying "Custer Died for Your Sins" and

"Custer Had It Coming" carry a humorous overtone, upon serious reflec- tion it is a particularly fitting irony that the man whose career was largely built on a much harsher, indeed lethal, use of the Indian should have his name exhumed in the interest of the Native Americans he hated so

fatally. Probably nothing would infuriate and surprise a resurrected Custer as much as the presence of Indian Studies in academia. Programs exist in a variety of forms and substances in colleges and universities located

primarily west of the Mississippi.1 The reasons for this geographic localism

might prove instructive and certainly an analysis of the social and political milieu which gave rise to Native American Studies a decade ago is now due. Additionally, the questions of what constitutes American Indian Studies, and how this collegiate phenomenon relates to older, established academic disciplines require answering. Finally, a discussion of the internal and external pressures operating to shape the present style and future composition of Native American Studies programs should offer a useful alternative perspective for judging the continuing efforts of other scholars dedicated to the study of American Indians.



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The development of Native American Studies in higher education has been closely attached to two related topics: the presence of American Indians in colleges and universities and the rise of ethnic studies generally. Indians have enjoyed a periodic popularity as potential students since the initial European invasion of the Americans. No sooner had Cortez established Spanish domain over the Aztecs and other tribes of Mexico, than certain of the conquistadores petitioned Charles V to authorize the

building of a college for Indians. Instead, in 1526, the Spanish monarch issued a command that a score of chiefs' sons be transported to the mother

country and educated there. No record remains that this order was ever carried through and a decade passed before the College of Santa Cruz de

Santiago de Tlatelolco was founded specifically to educate the sons of

prominent Native Americans in January, 1536. This institution, government financed and staffed by members of the Franciscan Order, suffered from poor administration from the beginning. Contemporary critics of the experiment initially scoffed at the scheme, saying the Indians were

innately stupid and incapable of any advanced learning. Later they grudgingly admitted the successes of the friars in turning out sizable

groups of educated Indian youth, many of whom remained to teach at their alma mater while several others secured important positions in the civil government of New Spain. Thanks to the Franciscans' erratic record in running the school it declined, and in 1595 underwent an ignominious conversion to become an elementary school.2 America's first example of Indians exposed to higher education had ended in a decidedly minor

key, but not before providing ample evidence that they were educable at the highest organizational level of learning offered by western civilization.

In the United States a similar approach, although never as ambitious as the Spanish example, was attempted during the colonial period. The English colonists were no slower than their Spanish counterparts in realizing that

educating and Christianizing the Indians could well prove less costly in blood as well as money expended than forcing their adversaries into a state of tractability. The Virginia settlers planned an Indian college as early as 1621, however, mutual hostility between the colonists and the tribes prevented its inception, leaving to the College of William and Mary the problems of educating the first Indian matriculants at a southern school. This latter event did not take place until the end of the seventeenth century, thus allowing Harvard the distinction among colonial institutions of admitting the first Indian collegians; the initial enrollment occurring in 1654. Dartmouth College in New Hampshire was the most active school in the higher education of Indians during the following century and a half until 1893, when funding and interest waned and virtually disappeared for



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a time.3 The school waited more than sixty years before actively recruit-

ing Native American students again, a move which brought Dartmouth into line with minority student affirmative activities of the last dozen

years. One might well speculate that as Indians gradually ceased to pose an authentic threat to the advancement of white settlement there was a concomitant lessening of any previously felt imperative to enter them into the new nation's colleges and universities. The efforts of missionaries,

government agents, and various humanitarian reformers to educate the members of tribes as they were reduced, one by one, to a reservation

existence centered their energies on imparting a "practical education," geared to produce God-fearing, English-speaking farmers and mechanics.4 Few teachers and friends of the Indian promoted higher education as a

necessary or even advisable extension of learning. If a few Indians

aspired to a postsecondary education, and fewer still were able to realize their ambition by actually entering college, much less remaining to

graduate, there can be no surprise in learning that Native American Studies has contituted a phenomenon of very recent origin.

This fact should not obscure the attempts made prior to the 1960s to initiate a field of study devoted exclusively to the American Indian. The first effectual recognition of the intrinsic worth of preserving and teaching about the large variety of Native American cultural heritages came in 1934. John Collier's suggestions for an "Indian New Deal," which became the basis of the Wheeler-Howard bill, included his belief that native arts and crafts ought to be supported and rapidly disappearing skills and

knowledge be imparted to the younger generations of Indians. While

Congress in the final version of this Indian Reorganization Act eliminated Collier's direct endorsement of the preservation of tribal cultures, the new Commissioner of Indian Affairs was able to partially carry out his original thinking through directing the bureaucratic process of translating legislation into action. To stimulate interest in conserving native crafts an Indian Arts and Crafts Board was inaugurated and a special school to foster a vocational art program was established at Santa Fe, New

Mexico.s While the major thrust of these efforts was wholeheartedly economic they did succeed in maintaining an interest and self-awareness in Native American culture and represented at least a partial departure from past government efforts to eradicate the last vestiges of its wards'

patrimony. The reluctance of the U.S. Congress to support arts and crafts instruc-

tion in 1933 should have come as no surprise. Nearly twenty years before in 1914, Senator Robert Owens of Oklahoma, responding to the petition- ing of his state's Indian people, had introduced a bill to create an Indian



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Studies Program at the University of Oklahoma; it was defeated.6 Subse- quent resolutions met a similar fate and no concrete legislation was formulated until 1932. In that year the creation of an American Institute of Indian Civilization was proposed in a bill sponsored by the entire Oklahoma congressional delegation. The legislation specified the University of Oklahoma campus as the site of the institute as the university regents had expressed their willingness to donate the land if the federal government agreed to construct a "fireproof building or buildings as . . . may be suitable ... for the higher education of native American Indians, and their descendants . . ." The bill also mentioned the necessity for the

university to establish "a college of Indian education and research co-or- dinate with other colleges in the university, and authorizing the granting of appropriate degrees . . . on a basis comparable to those provided in other schools and colleges in the University." The institute was to have a three-fold mission: for research and instruction in the elements of Indian civilization, for the preservation of materials illustrating that civilization, and for an annual meeting of Indians and whites at which the problems of the Indian . . [might] be discussed with a view to bettering the condi- tion of the Indian."7

Unfortunately, this ambitious project was never approved by congress nor were later bills introduced by Oklahoma legislators more successful. The cost of the proposed institute during a depression decade coupled with competition from rival ideas and concepts of the Collier administration largely explain the failure of these early attempts to inaugurate an Indian Studies program. Less easy to comprehend is the tardiness of Oklahoma colleges and universities in promulgating Native American Studies units given the early interest expressed and the presence of large numbers of Indians in the state and on campuses. Courses dealing with Indians as the primary subject matter have not been lacking and many schools possess well-developed financial aids and counseling programs. The University of Oklahoma and Northeastern State University of Oklahoma at Tahlequah have developed interdisciplinary academic areas of concentration but no separate, degree-granting departments appear likely in the near future. A full explanation for this state of affairs would necessitate a thorough examination of Oklahoma Indian history, however, some conditions militating against the development of Native American Studies are dis- cernible.

Ironically, the very factors that led Oklahoma Indians to be first in expressing a desire for Indian Studies kept them from achieving their goal. The state's Native American population lost its reservations in the latter part of the nineteenth and early part of the twentieth centur-



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ies.8 In some cases tribes in other parts of the nation suffered the same fate but rarely were they subjected to as rapid an influx of Anglo-American settlement and consequent pressure to assimilate themselves. Although a sizable minority, Oklahoma's Indians responded to that pressure to the extent of partially acquiring the white man's educational and acquisitive ambitions and concomitantly a degree of the majority culture's value system.9 Commissioner of Indian Affairs Collier had the Oklahoma Indian's situation as well as that of other partly acculturated Native Americans in mind when he began his "Indian New Deal" of the early 1930s by emphasizing a determination to "reawaken Indian pride" through programs leading away from the assimilationist policies of his predecessors. Many Oklahoma Indian communities and tribes resisted New Deal efforts to turn them from their individualistic ambitions toward an earlier communal life style and they provided much of the leadership of the anti-Collier American Indian Federation organized in 1934.10 Thus a portion of the state's Native Americans have viewed and continue to appraise any segregation of Indian/white affairs, even to the establishment of a separate academic field, as potentially regressive. They share the belief of many white Oklahomans that the state's Indians are fully accepted by the majority culture, suffer from little or no discrimination, and as a con- sequence need no special consideration in academia.11

Earlier it was stated that the appearance of Indian programs was closely connected to the presence of Indians on campuses and the acceptance of ethnic studies generally. It has been demonstrated that Native Americans were college students from the time of the Spanish Conquest without any evident progress in the matter of inculating a systematic study of Indians into existing higher education curricula. The single exception to government indifference, and frequent hostility, toward any kind of recognition of worthiness in the retention of Indian culture has been noted, so that it be- comes obvious that events shaped a new frame of reference after the 1930s which made the introduction of Native American Studies on to the campus possible.

The decade of the 1960s witnessed several rapid transformations, or at least modifications, in existing American institutions. Among those factors that influenced change was a growing awareness on the part of some indivi- uals and groups that certain concepts concerning society were overripe for critical analysis. Long held "truths" required intensive proving for possible shortcomings. One such "truth" was the validty of the "melting pot" theory of American history. According to many social scientists and historians, the past history of the United States and the resultant society could be likened to the process in which varying ingredients are tossed into



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a container, cooked, and emerge as an homogenized new product. Thus the disparate human elements which had been gathered into the United States had lost much of their individual groups' distinctness through experiencing a common history, and had fused together in forming a

society uniquely American. If the melting pot hypothesis had stopped at the point of social science

theory, its effects on the nation's people would have been minimal. Instead, the academician's explanation of society was elevated to the level of shibboleth by all those leaders and shapers of men's lives, actual and self-

styled, who viewed it as a convenient scholarly underpinning for their

hyperbolic efforts to mold Americans, however heterogeneous, into a malleable conformity. This latter seemed an especially attractive goal in the fifteen year period following World War II. The momentary exhilira- tion of military victory, combined with the heady realization that they were the sole possessors of atomic power, persuaded most Americans that their postwar lives would be marked by security and progress. Unfor-

tunately for this sense of well-being, it was foreshortened before it could evolve into a comfortable complacency as the United States became aware that vanquishing armies and concocting super weapons was failing to

guarantee contentment. The national chagrin at the appearance of a new set of enemies was

sharpened by the remembrance of recent triumphs ending World War II. And just as all segments of society had joined in a common effort during the war, so were the American people exhorted to enlist in the new bloodless conflict, the Cold War. For a people historically oriented to direct action for problem solving, the ideological skirmishes of the 1950s

provoked widespread impatience, dissatisfaction, and occasionally, paranoia. If the new war was to be fought over ideas and won with words, then Americans had to be equipped with defenses for the mind. An exultation of the national culture appeared only logical as a bulwark against foreign attacks on the American system. Teachers and educators were urged to inculate a strong dose of patriotism into their curricula, especially in the social sciences. All too frequently the result was that meaningful analysis of the national history and institutions gave way to chauvinistic paeans defending the United States system against all attacks, real and imagined. Minority and majority people alike felt the effects of what historian David Brion Davis termed "the full coerciveness of our supposedly per- missive culture."l2

This tendency toward coerced conformity was severely challenged in the 1960s and found wanting by many.13 One manifestation of the new

questioning attitude toward the preceding years' uncritical defense of the



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status quo was evidenced on the country's college and university campuses. While it is beyond the scope of this writing to dissect all the elements that combined to produce the youth revolution or to evaluate all the goals of movement, it can be readily asserted that minority students played important roles in the struggles, and that demands for the incorporation of ethnic studies into the curriculum were often prominent in campus confronta- tions. Sometimes the ultimatums were met, not infrequently because the extension of accepted courses of study to include minority peoples seemed relatively innocuous in comparison with demands for tearing down existing university structures, physical and intellectual. Additionally, studying the history and culture of Blacks could be rationalized as a collegiate expension of the civil rights movement.

As the largest racial minority in the United States and wielding the ad- vantage of momentum gained from off-campus political victories, black students usually assumed leadership positions in establishing ethnic studies. Other groups, including Indians, generally followed the lead of black students and professors or joined with them in concerted efforts to build more or less unified academic units. Currently, two institutions of higher learning in the country offer opportunities to earn undergraduate degrees in Native American Studies developed by individual programs-the Univer- sity of Minnesota and the University of California at Berkeley.. In both cases the programs largely emanated from student action, action occurring after or in conjunction with black campus movements. A delineation of the establishment of the two studies departments should partially reveal the common motivations behind their inception as well as identifying important differences in their patterns of growth.

American Indian Studies was officially designated a department by the University of Minnesota's Board of Regents in June, 1969. Five years previously, the UM president, 0. Meredith Wilson, had adopted a committee to deal with American Indian affairs. Apparently there was little immediate interest on the campus, which scarcely surprises, as only a handful of Indians attended school there. It is also noteworthy that the committee's membership included no Native Americans. During the interim from the formation of the committee to the regents approval of departmental status, campus indifference turned into cautious interest. The University of Minnesota draws its students from a state and region in which Indians constitute the largest racial minority. By 1969 between forty and fifty attended the University, an increase over the handful present five years before and reflective of an active Upward Bound program, unique nation- ally for its all-Indian board of directors. The organization and activities of the American Indian Movement in the northern states brought the civil



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rights struggle to Native Americans, however, it was UM's black students who first requested the creation of an academic unit devoted to studying a single minority group. This occurred in 1968, and Indians on campus followed suit the following year.

In January, 1969, the black students at UM, impatient for faster action on implementing their demand for an Afro-American Studies unit, occupied the administration building. Soon after, Indian students met with university officials to press their cause, emphasizing that an Indian Studies program would benefit the entire campus community, not merely its Indian com- ponent. An ad hoc committee, composed of white faculty, Indian students and community representatives, was appointed and quickly endorsed the concept of a department to be housed within the college of liberal arts. There was discussion aimed at setting up an interdisciplinary program transcending departmental and college lines, but this option was rejected in favor of the departmental model. The university's past experience had revealed that interdisciplinary programs were accorded second class citizen- ship status. It was also concluded that a better integration of the proposed curriculum, programmatic continuity, and financing would result from the departmental alternative.14

For the brief history of Native American Studies in academia the year 1969 is all-important. The official recognition of NAS as a scholarly concern on many campuses falls within that twelve month span. So it was in the case of the University of California at Berkeley. However, the cir- cumstances surrounding the creation of Indian Studies at UCB, as well as the final form it assumed, differed greatly and in a significant manner from the sequence of events at the University of Minnesota. While both Indian programs secured a foothold in their respective university structures almost simultaneously, the UCB unit sprang into being virtually overnight. Berkeley's student body in 1969, included fewer than a half dozen Native Americans while the state of California, although possessing a considerably larger Indian population than Minnesota, boasts the presence of much larger numbers of Spanish-speaking peoples, Asian-Americans, and Blacks, many of whom attended UCB. These last named groups were well represented in the Third World student strike of 1969, which featured mass rallies, demonstrations, and the occupation of university buildings. Chief among the demands of the strikers was the establishment of a department of ethnic studies.

Numerically insignificant, the Indian students participating in the strike were queried by the other minority demonstrators as to whether or not they wanted an Indian Studies unit to be included in the new department. The reply was an emphatic affirmative.15 As originally constituted in



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March, 1969, the Department of Ethnic Studies housed four semi- autonomous programs: Native American Studies, Asian-American Studies, Afro-American Studies, and La Raza Studies (later renamed Chicano Studies). Each program was headed by a coordinator, analogous to a vice chairman in other academic schematics, who was responsible to a departmental chairperson. The latter communicated his department's concerns

directly to the university chancellor's office. The Department of Ethnic Studies was purposefully positioned outside any existing campus college or school, partly due to its experimental nature and partly because of the

language employed in the 1969 academic senate legislation establishing a de-

partment of ethnic studies which was to have a structure "of sufficient

flexibility to permit evolution into a College."16 Before commenting on the contrasting consequences of the Indian

Studies programs' developments at UCB and UM, a definition and general discussion of the status of Native American Studies and universities is necessary. Programs vary in size, commitment, goals, and purposes, not to mention designations. Shakespeare's discourse, declaiming the importance of names, failed to forsee future society and its preoccupation with images and the appellations that help form them. Perhaps there is no better

example than the instance of the changed nomenclature used to describe America's ethnic groups. Often these are fraught with political connotations as in the instances of Spanish surnamed people and Blacks, however, in the case of Indians, cognomens have remained largely a matter of personal taste and common sense.

America's original inhabitants were termed "Indians" in the mistaken belief that the early European explorers had reached Asia. The name stuck, although Europeans, especially the English, usually employ the adjectival specific, "Red Indian," to differentiate the American variety from the product of the Asian subcontinent of India. Since the term "American," has been most widely used to refer to all dwellers of the western hemisphere the explanatory "Native American" has had a recent vogue. This designation has caused a certain amount of confusion among those persons who associate "Native" most readily with meaning people or things originating in a particular geographic area. Others complain that "Native American" can and frequently is used to describe all the prehistoric inhabitants of the United States, thus Eskimos and Hawaiian aborigines might well be included unknowingly when utilizing this usage. Most departments and programs have adopted "American Indian Studies" or "Native American Studies" and any noticeable uneasiness attached to either of these usages has come primarily from non-Indians. It should be noted that the term "AmerIndian" has not been considered a viable



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option by most Native Americans, probably due to the word's social scientific artificiality, smacking of an anthropologist's labelling device. Nor will one discover (and undoubtedly no one really expected to find) academic units calling themselves "Redskin Studies," "Savage Studies," or "Dusky-skinned Denizens of the Plains and Forests Studies."

If a certain degree of confusion has resulted from the naming process of campus units studying Indians, academia has met the challenge of

jargon with a confusing argot used to describe those units' functions and status. To date, there has been no comprehensive survey of Indian-related course offerings, academic programs, and counseling and special service units. The most recent survey, compiled in 1974, and relying on a ques- tionnaire sent to one hundred institutions of higher learning, uncovered

seventy-six offering courses with Native American content and eighty-three housing service or special Indian-oriented programs.17 Ignoring the primarily service types of operations and the numerous scattered courses concerned with Indians, there still remains a large residue of more or less autonomous Native American Studies programs.

These operate on various levels of organization. Many community colleges, junior colleges, and some universities support one or two instructors offering American Indian Studies classes, often providing a core curriculum which can be supplemented with Indian-related courses in traditional departments for interested students to earn a minor, possibly even a major. More frequently campuses will feature a minor or area of

emphasis in Native American Studies coordinated by an academic in a

department, usually in history, literature, or anthropology, who has some interest in Indians. Generally the coordinator will also bear the administrative responsibility of overseeing counseling and recruiting activities. Few institutions have cared to set up separate offices and financial provisions to complement Indian Studies, nor is there any precise correlation between the program's academic designation and its degree of autonomy or sophistication. The Department of American Indian Studies at San Diego State University does not offer a major as one might expect, nor does it employ any full time faculty other than the chairman. The Native American unit at UCB on the other hand, while classified as a program, that is, a subdivision of a department, offers a major degree program taught by four permanent ladder rank faculty and three to five full and part-time lecturers. Further confusing the status of NAS is the habit of many institutions in housing Indian Studies wherever convenient at the moment of creation so that Indian instructors at the University of California at Davis find themselves working in the Department of NAS within the College of Agriculture. At Michigan State University the NAS program found a haven in the School



WILSON 217

of Urban Development. Obviously, the current status of American Indian Studies defies facile

organizational classification. More significant is that which is suggested by the discipline's diversity of expression. Colleges and universities have dis-

played varying degrees of enthusiasm for the study of the American Indian but in a very large number of cases they have given support, grudgingly or

willingly, in response to expressed interest in the subject. This discussion has suggested that the presence of some Indians on campus was a necessary precondition to the creation of an Indian Studies unit and that those programs that have been established owed their inception to the larger civil

rights struggle and resultant change in the nation's frame of reference from the melting pot to cultural pluralism.

The continued existence of Native American Studies, despite jerrybuilt structural integration into traditional campus communities, is an indication of strong curiosity in the content of the academic offerings. Although no one has gathered conclusive evidence in this area, my own experience and that of my colleagues in other NAS programs points to a unique aspect of the enrollments in Indian-related courses as compared to other ethnic studies classes. Within the Department of Ethnic Studies and Afro-Ameri- can Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, administrators and

professors have noticed that classes dealing with the Chicano, Asian- American, and Black experience depend largely on enrollments drawn from the minority group being studied. Most often the percentage of ethnic students over white exceeds ninety percent. As inverse proportion is the rule for NAS courses which attracts members of the other ethnic groups in addition to large numbers from the majority culture. As a result the Native American Studies programs need not fear scanty enrollments

despite relatively small Indian student populations. The appeal of NAS classes to non-Indians reflects the present high interest in America's original inhabitants which is evidenced by the popularity of Indian jewelry and art and the use of Native American motifs in a variety of commercial items ranging from haute couture to bed sheets and bath towels.

Wilcomb Washburn commented on this vogue for things Indian in a 1975 article but cautioned that the "assumption that interest in the Indians by the white majority will continue at the present high peak is naive."18 Recognition of the veracity of that judgment partially prompted the writing of this paper. The continued vitality and growth of Native American Studies must rely on the personnel who staff the programs and their ability to cope with pressures and problems within and outside the academic units. Unfortunately, there exists no consensus concerning how



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to accomplish this task other than a basic acknowledgment that something must be done beyond what has taken place thus far.

As the decade of the 1970s waned, the emphasis on cultural pluralism and minority status in American society appeared to be lessening. Fewer

gains are being evidenced in equal opportunity and affirmative action

programs while reports of "white backlash" and "reverse discrimination" crowd the newspaper columns which a few years before had chronicled the various ethnic groups' struggles for civil rights and cultural integrity. Institutions of higher learning were looked upon as sanctuaries where the

study of minority cultures could advance. Naturally, the knowledge that this support had faded tinctures the thinking and planning of those involved with the administration and teaching of ethnic studies programs. Pressure has risen to forego some of the rhetoric of alternative educational commitment in favor of following a more traditional academic path. At the same time these individuals are cognizant of the dangers inherent in accommo-

dating themselves into academic legitimacy; they fear their original raison d'etre will be hopelessly compromised in the process. Native Ameri- can Studies programs, conscious of the academic scenario that featured Afro-American Studies departments changing their stance drastically in the face of declining majority culture empathy, desire a path that will allow them to acquire respectability without losing those aspects of cultural

integrity which distinguish their programs from older, established departments. Social scientist William McCready has noted that the "most rapid way for a group to draw attention to its needs is to become "a social

problem. This is also the quickest route to the loss of control over whatever programs are eventually designed to meet these needs."19 That this dictum is not far-fetched can be maintained by the example of the UCB

program's progress. In 1973 the Department of Ethnic Studies was re- viewed and while several positive assessments were made in regard to the NAS program two rather alarming suggestions were made "if the [program] is to have a chance of evolving into a department . . ." One was that student involvement with the program's decision-making process be radi-

cally altered in the direction of less input and secondly that NAS "might strengthen its chance for long-term survival if it affiliated ... with a

department such as Anthropology or with Chicano Studies . . ."20 Given the central role played by Indian students in the program's inception and the anti-anthropological bias of many Native Americans and their antipathy toward Chicanos in some areas of the U.S., these suggestions were tanta- mount to asking NAS for self-repudiation of its goals and aspirations.

If there is no agreement on exactly how these can be achieved, the lack of agreement arises from the interacting internal and external pressures on



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NAS programs which combine to create almost constant turmoil for administrators, faculty, and students. Both Russell Thornton of the Indian Studies department at the University of Minnesota and Clara Sue Kidwell of the University of California at Berkeley program have isolated that facet in the development of NAS that has contributed most to their confusion and lack of direction.21 Indian Studies programs were initiated structur-

ally before a true academic discipline had evolved, or even been seriously contemplated. The early years of development were marked by a gamut of responses to the opportunity that presented itself in the form of instant academic units. Today the responses are still somewhat varied, however, the majority of NAS programs have centered their efforts on a half dozen

goals. Rhetoric was the order of the day in those programs established in 1969,

and during succeeding years the Red Power movement and expressions of Indian nationalism dictated the mood on many campuses as the programs channeled their resources into recruiting Indian students and devising remedial courses to keep them there. Some busied themselves with trying to formulate a Native American revolutionary ideology while others struc- tured courses whose content seemed preoccupied with an exultation of Indian virtues rather than a measured evaluation of Indian cultures past and present. Indifference on the part of many college officials, or resent- ment triggered by the Indians' forced entry on to the campuses, resulted in minimal administrative perception of the singular problems of the new Indian departments. There was little preparation for the handling of the culture shock experienced by Indian students entering highly volatile urban schools after lifetimes spent on reservations or in rural areas. Scarcer still were exercises in flexibility by university administrators in dealing with these new academic programs.22

While the threat of incipient violence to resolve campus issues has largely departed academia since the early 1970s, many of the problems of NAS remain unsolved. If differences of opinion concerning goals and directions are couched in quieter tones they still linger, and indeed cut deeper as the programs face crucial decisions about their continued existence. Washburn's article assessing the status of Indian Studies programs in 1975, concluded that they must attain "academic respectability or go down the drain" and "accommodate themselves to the university ethic: the commitment to finding the truth both as an end and a method." He suggests that the Indian Studies program at UCLA, featuring an American Indian Culture Center "with strong connections to all concerned departments of the university" and holding "as a major premise, an acceptance of 'reality within the University Community,"' offers a "potentially more effective" organi-



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zation than programs with an "emphasis on political activism and ethnic

exclusivity . ."23 This evaluation, while painful to the sensibilities and certainly un-

acceptable to many participants in Indian Studies programs, does serve to

point up some of the troublesome aspects of their development not yet mentioned. The subject matter of NAS is necessarily very broad as it

attempts to deal with a wide range of Indian cultures and their history as well as their relations with the majority society. Campus committees on courses continually challenge courses which appear to duplicate existing classes in established departments or seem contentious in their concept- ualization. While there is some overlapping with traditional curricula, and chauvinistic language is employed occasionally to describe the courses, the intent of the curricula is to examine Native America from a Native American point of view. Understandably, and with good reason, many believe employing Indians with an expertise in the study of their own

heritage has seemed the simplest, if not wholly satisfactory, way of trying to meet that requirement. The attempt has laid the programs open to

charges such as those by Washburn of ethnic exclusivity. In the actual

operation of NAS programs this has not occurred. Non-Indians have been hired to fill teaching and staff positions and, as already mentioned, the classes attract enrollments made up largely of white students. In fact the latter circumstance has given rise to consternation among Indian instructors who have noticed that many of their Native American students will not

respond readily when placed in classrooms in which they are a tiny minor-

ity, almost outsiders, listening to discussions of their culture by others, many of whom are oblivious to their Indian classmates' sensitivities.

Beyond the classrooms, NAS faculties and staffs share the pressures exerted on the larger Indian community and feel additional stress emanat- ing from that selfsame community. Particularly in the beginning years, Indian students were drawn from urban backgrounds. Struggling to main- tain their identities as Indians they, as well as many community leaders, espoused arbitrary standards for measuring "Indianness" in others. Since Indian academicians often failed to fit the popular notion of what constituted a "real Indian" or "traditional Indian," they met with some hostility and responded by trying to become "super Indians," able to assume the roles of college professor, militant Red Power advocate, community worker, and simultaneously establish a link with a reservation experience or background. Native American Studies represents the only academic discipline in which one is expected to approximate a living example of the subject as well as teach it.

Professor Washburn's appraisal indirectly reveals why his conclusions



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must be modified. Few in Native American Studies today would argue that a degree of accommodation is necessary to achieve academic acceptance or that earning the latter status is desirable. They would, however, question whether the UCLA model is necessarily the most viable path of advancement for our discipline. There are other considerations that the staffs of NAS programs assert are equally as important, nor can the

dichotomy insinuated by juxtaposing an assimilated program with an

independent department, and labelling the latter as non-academic due to its ethnic exclusivity and political activism, exhaust the possibilities for the future of Native American Studies. Washburn's own impressive research and writing unwittingly points the way that many Indian academicians want to follow. Among the final lines of his volume in the

prestigious New American Nation series, Washburn states that "The Indian

provides a unique element in the American nation: at once a part and not a part of American society."24 The goal of NAS programs includes an achievement of academic respectability within the university setting while

maintaining an Indian perspective and identity. There should always be. an element of uneasiness and ethnic awareness on the part of Native Americans located in the manicured groves of academe else they forget their own unique heritage located among less ordered forests, mountains, and plains.

Given the changed political and societal attitudes in the United States toward minority groups generally, Washburn's misgivings about the probable destiny of Native American Studies must be answered more fully. If those

persons active in the field reject, as many do, his suggestion of near total assimilation for survival then theirs is a responsibility to offer viable alter- natives. Many advocates of the continuation of NAS as a more or less

independent and separate academic entity would agree that the various and varying Indian Studies programs have a threefold mission. Initially, the units must provide a place on college campuses in which scholarly, interdisciplinary research on Native Americana can be conceived, encouraged, and completed. Secondly, faced with the alien environment of the

university, Indian students should be able to find a social enclave within NAS programs and receive a cultural reinforcement from the curriculum.

Finally, the attitudes of the instructors and the content of their classes should serve to sensitize the non-Indian students to the realities of Native American life and history. Emphasis on any of these three goals at the

expense of the other two would lessen the strength of a rationale for

continuing Native American Studies programs and seriously impair the

argument that they offer something unique in academia.25 Whatever goals Indian Studies programs promulgate for themselves,



222 AIQ

they will be judged, at least partially, on the practical results generated by their efforts. Among those questions regarding the relative success of new

programs in academia commonly considered in evaluative processes, include: has the field of study evolved into a full-fledged discipline, what contributions to scholarship have been made by its practitioners, and how has its applicability to society been tested through the subsequent careers of students graduating in the field? The second query is quickly answered if inconclusively. Native American Studies has experienced a bare decade of being. The small number of faculty involved and their preoccupation with administrative organization, curriculum development, and student recruitment has precluded the production of a significant body of published scholarship. The second decade of Indian Studies hopefully will offer a

quantity of articles, monographs, and texts upon which an analysis can be made of whether there has been a true scholarly contribution to knowledge.

Part of the reason for the relative paucity of publication by professors in the field of Native American Studies has been their preoccupation with

attempting to formulate the tenets of a new discipline. Russell Thornton's

study of those attempts concludes that American Indian Studies constitutes a "quasi-discipline" thus far. He defines NAS as "the endogenous consideration of traditional and contemporary Indian societies located in the Western Hemisphere," and suggests that it most resembles an area studies program, such as Latin American Studies or Russian Studies, that

brings a number of disciplines together in a common concern of explica- tion. As yet the combination of scholars from several academic traditions, although in agreement on the necessity of studying Indian societies from an endogenous or internal perspective, have not evolved "a distinct and

unique set of methodological procedures, techniques or apparatus."26 No one involved in the development of NAS would quarrel with this assessment. Obviously, the coming of age of American Indian Studies as a unique scholarly tradition rests in the future, nor should this unduly alarm or dis-

may its adherents if they consider that other disciplines, now regarded as "established," underwent generations of research and analysis to evoke that valuation.

The lack of consensus pertaining to the definition and structure of American Indian Studies has been paralled in the wide disparity of

backgrounds of students majoring in the subject and their subsequent careers following graduation. It has already been noted that NAS courses attract an extremely varied student enrollment, thus one might logically expect those choosing to specialize reflect on that heterogeneity. At the

University of California at Berkeley, where the NAS program has offered an academic major since 1972, students graduating in American Indian



WILSON 223

Studies have been divided almost equally between Indian and non-Indian.

Approximately sixty have graduated through July, 1978, many with concurrent major programs earning degrees in two disciplines. This latter has been encouraged by NAS academic advisors frankly fearful than an Indian Studies major might prove too esoteric for postgraduate employment, particularly for non-Indian degree earners. Existing records are incomplete, however, the graduate majors appear to have elected to further their education in graduate and professional schools, especially law and public health, or go directly into Indian community development work in urban, rural, and reservation projects. Many of those currently enrolled in postgraduate educational programs have expressed strong commitments to utilize their orientation into Indian society in ways helpful to the development of the Native American community. Some have already demonstrated their continuing interest in NAS by serving as tutors and teaching assistants for the Berkeley NAS program.27

The development of Native American Studies in academia cannot be

definitively evaluated at this early date. Many questions relating to the

programs and their work must await the passage of additional time. Pro- fessors and administrators struggling with the issues raised in the fore-

going discussion are frequently questioned about the nature of NAS

possibilities for survival, and the rationale for continued existence on

campus. A complete answer would require another discussion similar in

length to this one for the question involves political, social, economic,

psychological and philosophical concerns. Vine DeLoria, Jr.'s provocative studies of the relations between Indians and whites, especially Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto (1969), We Talk, You Listen: New Tribes, New Turf (1970), and God is Red (1973), offer a strong case for the great value Native American philosophy and culture can hold for a modern America, uncertain of its own worth. And certainly no advocate of liberal arts education can protest the presence of programs dedicated to the study of a sizable minority group whose tribal com-

ponents number in the hundreds. The non-Indian enrollments in NAS classes provide sufficient evidence that coming generations of Americans will continue to be interested in the Indian.

Perhaps the aspect of a rationale that is most pertinent to those

directly responsible for NAS is that which affects Indians and their place in society. The decades of the 1960s and 1970s witnessed renewed interest

by Native and Anglo-Americans in the Indian. If that curiosity is to trans- cend mere chauvinistic posturing on the part of Indians and popular culture on the part of other Americans, then Native American Studies must survive. One might point to the existence of Indian-related courses in other



224 AIQ

academic disciplines. While these are not unimportant or reprehensible, they fail to offer that endogenous viewpoint for which NAS programs have striven. Possibly, those academicians in fields of study such as history, anthropology, and ethnography, have unconsciously contributed to an unfortunate attitude toward acquiring knowledge of the American Indian.

The American Anthropological Association held its 1976 national convention in Washington, D.C. Several NAS programs were represented and many of us who attended the meeting wandered from the scholarly sessions in order to view some of the capital's tourist attractions. The Smithsonian Institutions's special bicentennial exhibit "We the People" drew my attention and I spent nearly four hours examining the huge exhibition hall's collections. The latter had been grouped by ethnic origin into a chronological arrangement so that visitors could trace the history of the United States from its origins to the present through its culturally pluralistic developments. Slightly dazed from viewing the wealth of memorabilia and artifacts, I collapsed onto a bus and returned to the convention. Contemplating the excursion just completed, I was suddenly struck by the singular treatment of the Indian at the exhibition. There had been several elaborate displays illustrating various aspects of Native Ameri- can life located in the Hall's spaces reserved for the chronological period spanning the first three centuries of European expansion in North America. However, in the area reserved for marking the history of the nation since the beginning of the twentieth century there was a single panel, about six feet by three feet, devoted to the Indian, a collage of newspaper clippings of American Indian civil rights protests in the 1960s and 1970s. The exhibitors' decision to concentrate their Indian displays to the period before 1900, only reflects the tendency of the American people to relegate Native Americans to the romantic past. It is as if the hopes of nineteenth century assimilationists for a "vanishing red man" had been realized psychologically in the public's mind.

Professor Murray Wax has noted that two chief criticisms of NAS programs have been offered. One holds that if a distinctively Indian culture still exists it is irrelevant for today's Native Americans and the other maintains that those cultural elements that rendered Indians unique have disappeared leaving a "degraded culture" or "culture of poverty," unworthy of serious study. Wax scoffs at such statements as manifestations of the anthropological error of placing Indians in monographs in an effort to preserve a status quo when Native American societies have always been changing entities. He agrees with Indian scholars that the race's cultural identifica- tion should be re-emphasized and re-enforced and concludes that "particularly in the educational context, it is misleading both to Indian and



WILSON 225

non-Indian students to portray Indianness as if it were a matter of preserving the traits of an aboriginal and static culture."28

Historians, ethnographers, anthropologists and other academicians have

largely concerned themselves with the Indian of past experience. The body of published work generated by their interest is voluminous and not infre-

quently meritorious. Yet it rarely alludes to the enduring Indian con- sciousness within today's society. Perceptions of Native Americans by non-academics has been gained primarily from the visual media whose representation of Indians has often been distorted or stereotyped and nearly always rooted in the pre-twentieth century past. Thus scholarly and popular interest in the Indian has centered on a presumedly vanished or vanishing American and been studied from an outsider's vantage point. Here is the

enduring rationale for Native American Studies-to provide a means of

coordinating the casual and scholarly concerns surrounding the study of the Indian and offer an integrated research and teaching program from a

uniquely Native American perspective. So what if Custer rolls over in his

grave at the prospect?

NOTES

1. The most notable exception to this statement being the Indian Studies program located at Dartmouth College. Other schools have instituted special counselling for Native Americans and courses of study for or about the Indian.

2. Juan Estarellas, "The College of Tlatelolco and the Problem of Higher Educa- tion for Indians in 16th Century Mexico," History of Education Quarterly, II (Decem- ber, 1962), pp. 234-43.

3. Evelyn C. Adams, American Indian Education: Government Schools and Economic Progress (New York, 1971), pp. 15-20. Indian students did continue to attend Dartmouth despite the lack of specific encouragement.

4. The author has dealt with this subject generally using the experience of the Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho as a focus in "Spears Into Plowshares: The Jeffer- sonial Ideal VS. the Native American," a paper presented at the 1976 Convention of the American Anthropological Association in Washington, D.C.

5. Adams, American Indian Education, pp. 87-88; Kenneth R. Philp, John Collier's Crusade for Indian Reform, 1900-1954 (Tucson, 1977), pp. 128-30.

6. W. Roger Buffalohead, "Native American Studies Programs: Review and Evalua- tion" in Indian Voices: The First Convocation of American Indian Scholars (San Francisco, 1970), p. 161.

7. "The American Institute of Indian Civilization," The Sooner Magazine (No- venber, 1932), IV, No. 5, p. 139.

8. Only the Osages, among Oklahoma's Indians, retain a reservation, and theirs is underground. The 1906 Osage Allotment Act preserved the tribe's subsurface mineral rights as a communal concern while alloting the surface area in severalty. For this reason BIA maps still show the boundaries of the Osage holdings as a reservation.

9. For a penetrating discussion of the effects of capitalism on Oklahoma's



226 AIQ

Indians see H. Craig Miner, The Corporation and the Indian: Tribal Sovereignty and Industrial Civilization in Indian Territory, 1865-1907 (Columbia University, 1976), passim.

10. Philp, John Collier's Crusade, pp. 118, 133-76. 11. It must be emphasized that this characterization does not apply to all

Oklahomans, Indian or white, nevertheless, many accept the sentiment expressed by Ruth Muskrat Bronson, an Indian member of the Institute for Government Research in 1932, when she stated that "the Indian is neither lionized nor discrimina- ted against in Oklahoma." "The American Institute of Indian Civilization." The Sooner Magazine, p. 139.

12. David Brion Davis, "Cultural History and the American Identity" in Wilton S. Dillon, ed., The Cultural Drama: Modern Identities and Social Ferment (Washington, 1974), pp. 148-49.

13. The above analysis of changing American attitudes since World War II was drawn from a variety of written sources and personal involvement in the era. Among the available specialized studies on the subject in addition to the Dillon volume cited in the previous footnote are Nathan Glazer and Daniel P. Moynihan, Beyond the Melting Pot (Cambridge, 1963), Michael Novak, The Rise of the Unmeltable Ethnics (New York, 1972), and Horace Kallen, Cultural Pluralism and the American Idea: An Essay in Social Philosophy (Philadelphia, 1956).

14. The particulars of the establishment of American Indian Studies at UM in detail can be found in Frank C. Miller, "Involvement in an Urban University" in Jack O. Waddell and 0. Michael Watson, eds., The American Indian in Urban Society (Boston, 1971), pp. 318-39.

15. This information was garnered from conversations with JoAllyn Aarchmbault, an Indian student at UCB in 1969, and currently a lecturer in the NAS program there.

16. March 4, 1967 Minutes of the Berkeley Division of the University of California Academic Senate, p. 1.

17. Patricia Locke, A Survey of College and University Programs for American Indians (Boulder, 1974).

18. Wilcomb E. Washburn, "American Indian Studies: A Status Report," American Quarterly, XXVII (August, 1975), p. 263.

19. William McCready, "Social Utilities in a Pluralistic Society" in Pastora San Juan Cafferty and Leon Chestang, eds., The Diverse Society: Implications for Social Policy (Washington, 1976), p. 17.

20. July, 1973 Report of the Committee Appointed to Review the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, pp. ii, 21.

21. Russell Thornton, "American Indian Studies As An Academic Discipline" and Clara Sue Kidwell, "Native American Studies: Academic Concerns and Community Service." Both papers were sponsored by the American Indian Culture and Research Center, University of California, Los Angeles and presented at the American Indian Studies Conference at UCLA held January 20, 1977 and subsequently published in the American Indian Culture and Research Journal (1978), II, Nos. 3 & 4 pp. 4-19.

22. A good case study of the problems attached to organizing a program can be found in the previously cited article by Roger Buffalohead in The First Convocation of American Indian Scholars.

23. Washburn, "American Indian Studies: A Status Report," American Quarterly, pp. 266-67, 273-74.

24. The Indian in America (New York, 1975), p. 275.



WILSON 227

25. Many of the judgements expressed in the last two paragraphs and throughout the paper came as the result of conversations and discussions with members of my UCB course, The Ideology of Native American Studies, offered during the 1975 and 1976 academic years and with staff and faculty, both Indian and white, located at several colleges and universities across the western states. Among the latter were Gerald Vizenor (UCB and UM), Clara Sue Kidwell (UCB), David Edmunds (Texas Christian University), Ann Metaalf (UCB), Ken Lincoln (UCLA), Lavonne Ruoff (University of Illinois, Chicago Circle), John Rouillard (San Diego State University), Paula Gunn Allen (University of New Mexico), and Charles Roberts (California State University at Sacramento).

26. Thornton, "American Indian Studies As An Academic Discipline," American Indian Culture and Research Journal, pp. 10-17.

27. Statistics concerning NAS majors graduating from other institutions add little to an early assessment of the extent of American Indian Studies programs' academic applicability as the records are incomplete and the numbers of students involved quite small. The question of double or concurrent majors is dealt with in Morgan Otis, Jr.'s, "A Native American Studies Program: An Institutional Approach," The Indian Historian, IX (Winter, 1976), p. 16.

28. Murray L. Wax, "Cultural Pluralism, Political Power, and Ethnic Studies" in Dillon, ed., The Cultural Drama, pp. 108, 114-16.



custer never would have believed it: native american studies in academia

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