University of California professors are creating an educational online course about Indigenous peoples’ experiences to improve the University’s relationship with Indigenous communities.
UC Office of the President is providing a three-year $879,000 grant to the Centering Tribal Stories project, led by Mishuana Goeman and Wendy Teeter.
The project seeks to educate the public on topics such as repatriation, land introductions, data sovereignty, U.S. government recognition and traditional ecological knowledge.
Teeter, who is UCLA’s repatriation coordinator and senior curator of archaeology at the Fowler Museum, said the 2016 repatriation project at UCLA – through which more than 2,000 ancestors were able to be returned to their tribes – prompted her, Goeman and Sedonna Goeman-Shulsky to think about what repatriation means to Indigenous peoples. Consequently, they created “Carrying Our Ancestors Home,” a website with a series of video interviews in which Indigenous peoples share their perspectives on repatriation.
Repatriation is the return of human remains and cultural items of Indigenous ancestors from museums to their communities so their descendants can complete traditions honoring their lives.
After the success of “Carrying Our Ancestors Home,” Teeter said they wanted to expand it to include other topics relevant to Indigenous experiences, which created an opportunity for collaboration across UC campuses and the amplification of Indigenous stories not heard by the general public.
Professors across the UC are creating a series of online lessons that showcase the perspectives of California’s Indigenous groups, said Clifford Trafzer, the Rupert Costo Chair of American Indian Affairs at UC Riverside. They are interviewing California’s Indigenous peoples and giving them a platform to explain issues important to their respective communities, he added.
Goeman, who is UCLA’s special advisor to the chancellor on Native American and Indigenous affairs, said the project spotlights Indigenous stories in an era of mass development and climate change, and universities need to acknowledge the ways they have hurt Indigenous communities in the past.
“Even while anthropology has changed over the years, anthropology has yet to reckon with that past of disrespect,” Goeman said. “So it gets left on the work of the tribes to do, … to take care of things that were not meant to happen.”
Goeman has a background in humanities and storytelling, and Teeter has worked in archaeology and repatriation, Goeman said. When Goeman and Teeter started the project, they sought out academics who had already established strong and ethical relationships with Indigenous communities, she added.
The project was also formed in close collaboration with local Indigenous communities including the Tongva, Tataviam and Chumash peoples, Teeter said.
Trafzer’s part of the Centering Tribal Stories project, “Carrying Our Ancestors Home,” focuses on repatriation and its importance to Indigenous communities. Trafzer said he and his graduate student assistant conducted interviews with two Indigenous women and three Indigenous men to hear their perspectives.
Many bodies of Indigenous peoples have been cruelly treated, according to Trafzer. For example, Mangas Coloradas, an Apache chief, was trying to promote peace with colonizers when he was murdered and had his head sent to the Smithsonian Institution, Trafzer said. The legacy of the story still hurts Coloradas’ descendants to this day, as they are unable to find his remains and carry out the traditions that honor him, Trafzer said.
“(Repatriation is) of great significance to Indigenous peoples who feel that human remains of their ancestors should come home and be repaired in the proper way of that particular tribe. Every tribe has a different way of dealing with human remains,” Trafzer said.
Goeman said she is working on a module called “Land Introductions,” which seeks to create relationships between tribes and the universities that are situated on their land.
The UC has taken over and profited from 150,000 acres of Indigenous land, according to a report by the Joseph A. Myers Center for Research on Native American Issues and the Native American Student Development office at UC Berkeley.
She said it is important to not only address whose land is occupied but to continue to learn about the local Indigenous history and consult Indigenous peoples about what should be done with the land in the future.
Indigenous peoples should also have more of a say in the use of their genetic information and other data, said Keolu Fox, an assistant professor of anthropology at UC San Diego and co-director of the UC Indigenous Futures Institute.
Fox said his work for Centering Tribal Stories focuses on Indigenous data sovereignty. Indigenous peoples should be able to own data about their genetic information and be more involved in research on their genetics, he said.
According to an article by Fox, Indigenous peoples should control access to their genetic information because there have been several genome sequencing projects in the past that have profited from it. The article also stated that the commodification of Indigenous genetic data further contributes to marginalization of their communities.
Trafzer said his colleague, Mark Minch-de Leon, an English professor at UC Riverside, will be interviewing Indigenous peoples about the importance of the federal government recognizing previously unrecognized tribes. He added that in the past, the U.S. would not establish legal relationships with certain tribes so it would be easier to seize their lands.
For example, in 1852, the U.S. had treaty negotiations with Indigenous communities in Temecula, San Diego and Santa Ines but not those along the coast of California where Los Angeles is today, such as the Gabrielino-Tongva tribe, Trafzer said.
Teeter said her part of the project relates to traditional ecological knowledge that Indigenous peoples in LA must use when situated in the middle of a city. She said she has been interviewing the Tongva peoples about caring for the Kuruvungna Sacred Springs that are surrounded by the urban community of LA.
“We want to help (Indigenous community members) co-create content because they can use that content for other things like community-driven organizations, (nongovernmental organizations) and grant applications,” Fox said.
UCOP has been supportive of the project but had to reduce the grant size because of the California budget crisis, so the principal investigators are not provided with travel money, Trafzer said.
“We had to cut $200,000 from our budget, but between four campuses, it was like, ‘How do we do this?’” Goeman said. “And the majority of our money was for training graduate students.”
The UC has not done enough for repatriation in the past 30 years, Trafzer said. However, he added that UC President Michael Drake and former UC President Janet Napolitano have been willing to prioritize repatriation projects.
Drake and Napolitano have consulted with the President’s Native American Advisory Council to draft repatriation policies and fund projects that benefit Indigenous peoples in California, Trafzer said. He added they passed a repatriation policy that went into effect in December.
The Native American Advisory Council has been influential because it brings together many different voices from tribal chairs, faculty, Indigenous advocates and various professionals who can inform UC leaders and enact change throughout the UC campuses, Teeter said.
Goeman said she hopes to offer the online course as an entry class into the UC system for Indigenous students in high school or community college. She added that the project highlights voices of tribal practitioners who can teach these students ways they can become involved in improving lives for their communities.
“We want it to be like Khan Academy or an MIT OpenCourseWare for things like Indigenous values, worldviews and community-based participatory research,” Fox said.
The website will contain 10 modules available in fall, and a course will be available for all UC students in summer 2023.
“The point of (the project) is that there (is this) diversity of perspectives among Indigenous people and that we shouldn’t be treated like a monolith,” Fox said.
Fox added the project will help Indigenous peoples take their stories back into their own hands after many non-Indigenous academics have controlled the narrative in the past.
“We need to not assume what tribal people want, we need to consult and work with them,” Goeman said. “And we need to form better relationships in the University with tribal communities.”
