‘Before they kill my spirit entirely’: insights into the lived experiences of American Indian Alaska Native faculty at research universities

ABSTRACT

American Indian and Alaska Natives (AIAN) comprise about 2% of the US population and 0.5% of the faculty in higher education. While scholars have documented the experiences of underrepresented minority (URM) faculty, the perspectives of AIAN faculty at elite universities are largely absent. Although AIAN faculty share many of the same barriers to success as URM colleagues, their unique status as Tribal peoples and their relationship to settler colonialism pose particular challenges and resistance strategies. Findings from a mixed methods study of 25 AIAN faculty at research universities, employing a decolonizing, survivance-oriented framework, examines their lived institutional experiences. The data yielded five themes regarding (1) institutional climate, (2) mentorship, (3) family–work balance, (4) cultural taxation and role stress, and (5) discrimination. The authors conclude that decolonization involves the repatriation of Indigenous epistemologies and Indigenous ‘place’ in the growth of science, research, and knowledge production, creating liberatory spaces within the academy.

KEYWORDS:

• Native American
• American Indian/Alaska native
• faculty
• discrimination
• mentoring
• decolonization

Acknowledgments

We are especially grateful to our former Program Officers at RWJF, Drs. Debra Perez and Catherine Malone and Dr. Kantahyanee Murray at the Annie Casey Foundation for their support, guidance, and enthusiasm about this study. Finally, we wish to thank the American Indian Alaska Native faculty across the US who participated in this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Research I/11 research extensive university is a Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education category used to identify US universities that give high priority to research activities.

2. Medal Chiefs were tribal leaders showered with gifts and empowered by the US to represent tribal interests even if they did not have authority.

3. Web-based and qualitative surveys.

4. Scale that consists of 5 items with 5 response options-scores from 5 to 25 with higher scores more activity [never = 1 and always = 5].

5. Scale has 5-point Likert Scale response option with 1 = Very Significantly and 5 = Not at all.

6. Web-based and qualitative surveys.

7. Only web-based participants (n = 23).

Additional information

Funding

Ruth E Zambrana is Principal Investigator of the study that was funded by the University of Maryland Tier 1 seed grants, Division of Research, Faculty Incentive Program, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) under Grant #68480; the Annie E. Casey Foundation (Grant 214.0277, and, in part supported by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities under grant #P60MD006909 (Karina Walters).