Academic Skins

8/7/2019 Academic Skins

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Academic Skins: Exploring the Role of American Indian Identity in the Academy

presented at the conference,Neocolonial Inscription & Performance: American Indian

Identity in American Higher Education, held at the MSUs Kellogg Center, October 16-

17, 2008.

Welcome.

We know that university professors have fraudulently claimed and invented

Indian identities to bolster academic careers. We have witnessed the willingness of self-

identified Indian professors to call tribal members, who are professors, racists and ethnic

intimidators when tribal members ask about their tribal lineage and ask about their family

histories. These same self-identified Indian professors refuse to disclose information

about their native backgrounds and their status or legal or otherwise connection to

federally recognized tribes. Their families are also not mentioned or not traceable or

when contacted do not necessarily claim Indian identity. Some self-identified Indian

professors are legitimate descendants of tribal people and recognize that they are not

members of Indian tribes; however, they tend to ignore tribal politics and tribal concerns

in favor of their own academic careers. The frauds and the self-identified Indians have

historically dominated campus Indian student and faculty groups and organizations,

control and/or take control of Indian studies programs and purport to speak for all

Indians, including tribal members. This leaves the members of federally recognized

Indian tribes who have earned doctorates and who have achieved tenure in U.S.

universities and colleges a distinct and often powerless minority within a group that is

historically the smallest minority group in any university/college campus.


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Of course politics plays a role. To be a member of a federally recognized tribe is

political. Tribal members have legal standing not only within their respective tribes but

also within states and the nation as a whole. To achieve such standing, an individual

must meet the membership requirements of the tribe, of the state and/or the federal

government. No other minority or ethnic group has such a political/legal status, which

makes tribal members unique and connected by Indian treaties to the U.S. Constitution.

Furthermore, politics creates a hierarchal stratum of status and identity that muddies the

water, especially when Indians enter the halls of academia. The sovereignty of the

tribes dictates that they have the right to establish their own membership criteria, which,

in at least one case, has opened limited membership for a short period of time to non-

Indians via a $25 membership fee. Tribes have also opened membership to descendants

of tribal members via a descendant card, which recognizes descendant status but does

not allow full citizenship rights like voting or having access to tribal assets or benefits. In

the latter case, tribal descendants do not meet the blood quantum or degree-of-Indian-

blood (DIB) set by that particular tribe or else they would be full-fledged members of

the tribe. Individual states have criteria of their own. For example, Minnesota

recognizes Indians who have descendant status in more than one federally recognized

tribe but not enough DIB to be a full-fledged member of any one. The federal standard

has been set at one-quarter DIB. Many Indians may meet this standard but are not

necessarily members of a particular tribe. In addition, an individual Indian may only be a

member of one tribe, even if they meet, like I do, the membership criteria for both their

mothers and a fathers tribes. In my case I am an enrolled member of the Cheyenne

River Sioux Tribe (my fathers affiliation), where I am certified as 9/16 DIB Cheyenne


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River Sioux. Despite that the math does not make sense, which supports the political

nature of Indian tribal membership, the remaining 7/16 DIB is partially (at least legally

DIB) Turtle Mountain Chippewa Tribe (my mothers affiliation), I can only be a

legal/political member of one of the two. Finally, many Indians can meet some or all of

the criteria cited above but they lack the proof or documentation. In the political nature

of tribal membership, they are not Indian, at least not legally. My little brother, because

he was born in Japan, was not immediately enrolled as a Cheyenne River Sioux for many

years and was not an Indian until he was fully enrolled some five years later. Despite

many petitions the tribal council in 1960 still remembered Japan as an enemy nation and

branded my brother Little Buddha, a nickname he never liked or could ever shed. That

is politics.

Despite these complexities of the legal status of Indian tribal membership, and I

mean full-fledged, voting members, very few tribal members earn doctorates and join the

faculty of Americas universities and colleges; on the other hand, numerous frauds and

self-identified faculty members have used Indian identity to advance academic careers

and build reputations with fake, vague and/or distant connections to tribal peoples. In my

generation and before (I am fifty years old at the time of writing) more than half of all the

tribal members I know and knew who were pursuing degrees in higher education dropped

out of school whereas the graduate students who I later learned were (are) fakes and who

were self-identified most often graduated and landed academic jobs in great numbers

immediately after graduation. Hell, over 75% of tribal members my age who I knew or

were related to did not even graduate high school, let alone lasting more than a semester

in a community college. Sure, the few tribal members earning their doctorates have


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achieved and earned very important positions but they have always had to compete and

butt heads with the fakes and self-identified. Some of the fakes and self-identified

became fake or self-identified late in their lives and, in some cases, many years after

securing academic positions; whenever, soon after making an affiliation to Indian tribes

to create an Indian identity, most of the fakes and self-identified were able to publish,

compete successfully for administrative jobs and land advisory or editorial roles in

academic journals or presses. While many tribal members struggled with the intricacies

and pitfalls of the academic landscape, most of the frauds and self-identified Indians

flourished.

At the university/college level in most instances, including Michigan State

University, faculty who claim Indian identity do not have to provide proof that they are

tribal members, which is the only legal method of establishing tribal affiliation, and that

makes the claim and entitlement by fakes and self-identified possible. Tribal membership

is not necessary to be an Indian faculty member to the officials and authorities

representing institutions of higher learning. Any individual can merely make a claim and

they are Indian; after that, they are entitled, and according to many, deserve special

treatment and consideration for their minority status, even if they never lived life as an

Indian until they made that claim. Maybe not so ironic, these same Indians have not

had a difficult time displaying their Indian-ness to the greater academic community

while tribal members are often perceived (often at the encouragement of the fakes and

self-identified) as exclusionary and racist. I have even had a so-called Indian faculty

member say that the suffering of Indian students (students who would later become

faculty members) due to prejudice and racism (the scar factor as he called it) was not


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necessarily a meaningful part of tribal identity. For those who look Indian and who

happen to be tribal members, the scar factor looms large and meaningful as the

remaining portions of this essay will explain.

To provide an illustrative example of what I mean I will tell the story of my own

journey of becoming what I call an academic skin. I use the term academic skins to

identify all those Indians (fake or otherwise) in the academic community and those who

particularly use their academic skin for self-promotion. I include my own academic skin

within the milieu but will at the end of the essay make some qualitative interpretations

and assessments. Tribal members in the academy should not be ashamed of their own

personal desires to be successful and to thrive in the same environment where others use

a false skin to make a career that they could not accomplish within their own original

skin. Skins is derived from redskins and is a way for tribal members to change a

negative racial slur into a positive act of defiance and reversal and to celebrate an Indian

identity in a joking way. I also want to draw attention to how a skin can be multi-faceted

metaphor that reflects the ability of anyone to grow a new skin every month or so and

that skin draws attention to color. Skin references the many layers of thickness that a

tribal member must have to succeed in the academy. On the other hand, skin is a mask

and a way of concealing what is underneath. Skin is what people see. Many tribal

members know that looking Indian is something that they can not control whereas

fakes and self-identified must let others know or otherwise code their skin in a

manipulative way to let others know that they have a redskin. Ergo, the ability to

exploit such a skin in an academic environment without scars or blemishes or flaws, an


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easily accepted persona to those non-Indians who understand very little about tribal

peoples, is easily effectuated.

The growing of my academic skin started early. As the lone tribal member in a

classroom of mostly white students, I was the class skin, the one skin that had to speak

for all skins for all time and for all purposes. Teachers would often call on my skin to

speak to knowledge I did not have and by context they did not have. For example, in

England where my dad was stationed, a teacher in a middle school classroom asked me to

spell, Sioux, because her records said I was Sioux, and I uttered the letters: s-o-u-x. I was

chastised for not knowing the proper spelling of my own tribe though I never used that

word before. I responded that my dad said I was Lakota, l-a-k-o-t-a, and that my

Tiospaye is Mnikoju, or Planters By The Water, of the Lakota or Titunwan, the

People of the Plains, though I had a hard time convincing anyone of the spelling.

Ironically, I was the top speller in the class with a 105% (again the math does not make

sense) GPA.

My skin made me an Indian long before I knew what that meant, which I mean

the stereotypical Indian. I was the guy whose eyes burned red when angry and I became

known as red eye. As a skin I was chief and I could climb trees. As a skin I was

sneaky and devious. I could be trusted and I could be an Indian giver. After awhile I got

used to these apparent powers and used the good ones for my own benefit because the

bad ones caused me so much grief and despair. For example, I thought I had to know

about every Indian tribe and if I did not, I felt an extreme emptiness. So why not exploit

the good where there was so much bad? On the physical side, I was born with clubbed

feet and had to wear orthopedic designed boots, particularly on my left foot, which I had


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to wear long after the right. I dragged that booted left foot with a recognizable gimpy

drag all the way through to high school, hardly a stoic and graceful Indian warrior, but

that is what kids thought of me and that is what I thought of myself. In many ways that

defect was not part of my visible skin.

Due to my clubbed feet, I became the nerdy reader and expert in many non-

physical fields; but my skin was what provided me with fame. In high school in the

1970s, I could be cast as an Indian in theatrical plays or become the odd character in

many other plays due to my skin (and not my left foot). I started to wear the handmade

clothing, ribbon shirts and beaded stuff my aunties and other relatives sent me because,

on reflection, I wanted more of that fame. I adorned the cowboy look my sister and I

sported with beaded bands, medallions, and figurines, and handmade and brightly colored

ribbons and cloth, very unique until John Travoltas Urban Cowboy hit the theaters. I

wore a cowboy hat with beaded headband for many years. One of the headbands spoke

out with: THINK INDIAN. The wearing of traditional and expressive Indian jewelry,

clothing and regalia helped answer the question all non-Indians wanted to ask me: Are

you Indian? I particularly remember a beaded pair of Indian husband and wife effigies

my auntie sent to me one time and that I wore on my left shirt pocket. As they wore out I

would request replacements, my own emblem of skin upon a skin, so often admired. As I

remember I wore generations of the beaded couple until I was 21.

Fakes and self-identified soon learned they could adorn themselves with all

manner of Indian stuff mostly, at first, bought at trading posts and later at the

ubiquitous powwow trader stands. The more adornment the less people looked at the skin


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underneath. I only wore what was produced by my own hand or family or given to me by

tribal relatives and/or friends.

My skin got me into college. Although I am sure my dad would have found a way

to pay for tuition, I was one of the first recipients of Michigan Indian Tuition Waiver Act,

which I later learned was linked to Indian treaties and was resurrected by tribal students

at Michigan State University. Fakes, obviously, and most self-identified do not meet the

legal requirements to qualify for this benefit linked to U.S. Indian treaties.

At the advice of my father, who was also enrolled, I attended Kellogg Community

College. There, I decided to pursue a degree in education, American Studies and

American History with focus on American Indian studies. An interest in U.S. literature

soon followed. I wrote, directed and produced an Indian (skin) play; however I had to

rely on the theaters ubiquitous Indian style costumes to portray my skins. The play was

mixture of what I knew about my cultural/family background and what I knew about the

clich and stereotypical Indian. I even created a Super-8 film of the play starring the same

actors and to my knowledge it still in the library archives of student productions. It was a

great success and I earned As in several classes due to that skin work. I gave the

audience the skins they wanted and at the time I felt good about it due to praise and

recognition; later I questioned myself and doubted myself about the use of tribal stories

combined with Indian stereotypes to get my message across. Feeling good about myself

was no longer a good reason to exploit my own skin.

My skin transferred to Michigan State University (MSU) and I soon joined other

skins in a variety of skin student organizations set out to make a difference: what we

accomplished was to learn many sobering and surprising lessons about the role of skins in


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institutions of higher learning. As political organizers and activists we formed the

Students Organized for Anishinabe Rights (SOAR) and we soon found that lobbying for

the refunding of the Michigan Indian Tuition Waiver Act had disappointing results as

SOAR students were told by state senators and representatives that tribes have no power

or rights. When we joined MSUs Native American Indian Student Organization

(NAISO) and decided to host the first annual MSU student skin powwow, we learned that

tribal members could succumb to a level of institutionalization, perhaps in fear for their

jobs or desire to save their own skins at the expense of the students. In the first annual

NAISO powwow held in 1982, two tribal members working for MSUs office of

supportive services took prize money out of envelopes prepared by students for the

various dance categories (womens shawl, mens fancy and etc.) and they tried to

accomplish the task without the knowledge of the Indian students. In the very next year,

they modified the 1983 powwow button from one created by a NAISO student who was

pursuing a graphics design degree by changing his handwritten script to typed and easily

readable version. Despite that merits or demerits of one design over the other, the two

Supportive Services skins decided within their own skins to make the change even after

the powwow committee had approved the design. Now what makes a tribal member

conform to an institution? When does a tribal member in the academy become

institutionalized? Those two could never convince us ever again that the powwow was a

student powwow because they undermined our efforts.

The growing of my academic skin continued at the University of Michigan. I was

awarded a University of Michigan Merit Scholarship and due to my skin, the award was

changed to a Michigan Minority Merit Scholarship, as the graduate school advisors


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by MSU as a target of opportunity, meaning my skin had minority status. Immediately

I was asked to join the Indian faculty and staff association (EAGLE) and the skins there

asked me for my identity papers. To be frank I was appalled at the request and

responded: you show me yours and Ill show you mine. Well I ended up showing mine

and I have yet to see all of theirs. They said copies were stored in some kind of file.

However, after many years of service at MSU and after many attacks, I learned that proof

of identity is politically and economically important to tribal skins in the academy.

EAGLEs foresight and wisdom in the matter of academic skins stressed the protection of

tribal members and tribal treaty rights in institutions of higher learning and my skin

eventually followed suit as attacks on my skin at MSU increased as my academic status

and rank increased.

You would be mistaken to think I am merely listing a series of grievances and

complaints because you would have never heard me share these experiences if it was not

for my encounters with fakes and self-identified skins willing to go to any extreme to for

self-promotion and academic gain. At MSU, I found the power and presence of fakes

and self-identified skins to be overwhelming and dominant. My skin was subjected to

many abuses and unfair treatment by these fakes and self-identified from

disenfranchisement from the American Indian Studies Program (AISP), which I helped to

build and grow, to formal accusations of ethnic intimidation, charges that were ruled

without merit. I had a wife of a self-identified skin of pursuing my romantically because

of my skin, which should have been called sexual harassment but was legally creating a

hostile work environment, according to university officials at the Womens Resource

Center. I had to suffer this indignity for almost three years of which I kept meticulous


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records and which I kept my wife, my chair, the Womens Resource Center, and several

colleagues informed of this persons antics and written advances, including a poem with

masturbation as its theme. Fakes and self-identified skins tried to take over EAGLE and

they were partially successful. They settled for creating an organization of their own but

not before destroying annual funding for Indian programming that had been a mainstay

and tradition at MSU.

Another strange event that I have been trying to correct but without success is the

non-recognition of a recognition award I thought I earned. In 2001, I was awarded an

All-University Excellence in Diversity certificate by the Recognition and Awards

Program but my name does not appear in the list of past winners or awardees (see the

attached certificate and also http://www.inclusion.msu.edu/eida/history - 2001 or

http://www.inclusion.msu.edu/eida/history), which makes me the only winner to not to

earn a cash award but I must also accept the humiliation of not being listed as a past

winner.

The strange and oftentimes unprecedented actions taken by administrators to

protect the self-identified and fakes and to protect their skins and their concerns and

positions are disturbing. For example, in the spring of 2008, my current chair asked me to

write a line to endorse the inclusion of new front-page disclaimer to the AIM:

Movement or Mafia web page, a web site created and maintained by student in my

Writing, Rhetoric & American Cultures (WRA or WRAC) 260 class, a course on Native

American rhetoric, and a web site advertising and presenting information on a class

promoted program. She advocated this change to appease a self-identified skin, who has

brought a technical complaint to necessitate such a disclaimer, or if he had his way, to


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remove the website altogether. She took his complaint at face value without

consultation with me and/or my students. His claim was a red herring designed to disrupt

and to discredit a program he disagrees with and to lend validity to his desire to harm me

professionally and personally, an advocacy in which he has long written and witnessed

record of pursuing. In any case, students of the WRA 260 class wrote all the content of

the website, created the visual look of the website and asked a WRAC administrator to

host the site on the WRAC website. The attack, however, was directed at my skin.

I am embarrassed to tell this condensed story because the sequence of experiences

are on the surface a list of complaints; however, I find at this stage in my career the

necessity of sharing a portion of my academic experiences as representative of tribal

experiences in the academy for the purpose of countering the activities of the fakes and

self-identified skins who have undermined and continue to undermine, intentionally or

not, the contributions and value of faculty who are also tribal members. Greed and

careerism by fakes and self-identified skins have destroyed, in many cases, a connection

to tribal communities and has discouraged input from tribal members who are also

academic skins. The fakes and self-identified skins have not fostered confusion and

dissent among students, staff, faculty and administrators they have also created a barrier

between the institution and the tribal members they feel will make their academic lives

more difficult.

What I have learned during the growing of my academic skin and what I can

recommend in this portion of the conference is to not let the fakes and self-identified

skins to cause harm or obfuscation, never let them prevent you from doing your academic

work. Despite all of the conflict and attacks, and I only summarize a few of hundreds of


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incidents I could chronicle, I have been able to publish my second book that has made a

significant contribution and have finished this fall a third. After years of silence, I

believe, now, that we must all tell our stories, repeatedly. Never let anyone in the

academic community forget our struggles; after all, stories is what the fakes and self-

identified skins have used in an attempt to destroy or discredit our own academic careers.

We should never become too institutionalized and let ourselves undermine the efforts of

tribal undergraduates, graduates, staff and faculty. I agree with the many here today that

we must continue direct action and name names. I have not included names (only two

slides as way of appendix) in the main of this document but the footnotes include them.

In the published version of this paper, I will advocate their inclusion.

Finally, if you are a tribal member, your academic skin as we all know must be

many layers thick.

Thank you for taking the time to listen.


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Slide 1: Here the buttons in question. The left is the student-designed button and theright is button that was changed by the Office of Supportive Services tribal skins.Remember at this time, the student had to use primitive photocopy technology, handcolor the buttons (which we did as a group) and employ a manual button maker.


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Slide 2: Here is the Excellence in Diversity Document, an award that I did not receivea cash prize, a prize all other recipients have received to date. I also am not listed as apast winner. See: http://www.inclusion.msu.edu/eida/history - 2001 orhttp://www.inclusion.msu.edu/eida/history

Academic Skins

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