Making campuses more inclusive of Native ideology

At the University of Pennsylvania, which is built on Lenape territory, three panelists shared their perspectives yesterday about the importance of “Indigenizing the Academy.”

The discussion featured panelists Maggie McKinley, an assistant professor in Penn’s School of Law; Ben Ototivo, a staff clinician at Penn’s Counseling and Psychological Services; and anthropologist Tiffany Cain, a doctoral student in the Department of Anthropology and in the Latin American and Latino Studies Program in the School of Arts and Sciences.

“Indigenization,” explains Ototivo, “fundamentally means to make things more in line with Native ideology. This includes moving toward reconciliation for colonization, establishing a supportive cross-cultural learning environment, and including indigenous ways of operating in every decision regarding policy.” He has been working at Penn for a little more than a year, and identifies as a member of the Comanche Nation.

It means looking at things through an indigenous lens, he says, which could mean different things for various geographic regions.

Indigenization may look different at Penn, where the Lenape originated, than in Oklahoma, where Ototivo’s tribe is from, due to a difference in tribal cultures and beliefs.

“Indigenization would look like incorporating these ways of knowing into every aspect of an institution, such as its administration, pedagogy, and recruitment,” Ototivo says. “This would entail a shift in philosophy from Western thought to one that is more in line with Native values and one that respects the culture.”

The first step to indigenizing the academy, Ototivo says, is acknowledging the people who first had a relationship with the land.

“From there it is becoming more aware of how intricate our Native American societies were prior to colonization,” he says. “This helps to get people thinking about how those who were here before had a different way of doing things, and a different approach to learning.”

McKinley, who is from the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe people, suggests working toward addressing colonialism.

“Modern American colonialism operates primarily through processes of erasure and disempowerment,” explains McKinley, and the first step toward mitigation is for the academy to work against the process of erasure by recognizing Native peoples.

“This could include practices of land recognition whereby academic institutions could recognize, at their events and otherwise, the original inhabitants of the land on which their institutions sit, and they could foreground Native peoples presently in the academy by including tribal affiliations in biographies, for example,” McKinley says. She says academic institutions could also include the histories, voices, and perspectives of Native people in the broader curriculum.

Because Native Nations occupy an ambiguous space as sovereign nations but are enclaves within the United States, many academic institutions don’t know whether to include them in discussions about American or international government.

“The answer here, of course, is both,” she says.

The panel discussion was organized by two fellows at the Graduate Student Center, Li Sian Goh and Amy Schindelman.

“I hope that Penn students and faculty become aware of how indigenizing the academy should be a conversation happening in every discipline, and at every level of academia,” says Schindelman, who is working on her master’s in intercultural communication in the Graduate School of Education. “My biggest tip, as a white person, would be to use the forms of privilege you have to actively boost Indigenous voices and perspectives.”

The panel discussion was hosted by the Grad Center at Penn and Native American and Indigenous Studies.