Protecting Indigenous Peoples’ Cultural Rights at Evergreen

Across North America, college and university campuses are sites of academic exploitation of tribal peoples’ cultures—today and throughout history. This exploitation occurs when scholars use corrupt research practices, and also when teachers perpetuate theories and values that are detrimental to tribal peoples in their classrooms. When those theories and values expand outward into communities with their graduates, they affect the worldviews and political agendas of the public.

In expropriating aspects of Indigenous cultural property—such as oral traditions, traditional scientific knowledge, sacred symbols, ceremonies and images through study, publication, experimentation, and other means—academics disrespect and damage tribal culture and people. Degradation of ancestral remains, sacred sites, items of cultural patrimony, and even genes for so-called scientific study is also an all-too-common occurrence.

Colleges have produced archaeologists, anthropologists, medical doctors and many other learned professionals who inflict harm upon tribal peoples and their cultures—malevolently or inadvertently— by remaining ignorant of the cultures, history and present-day condition of the tribes they work with.

In 2007, the landmark United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was passed after a decades-long struggle to adopt it. Article 11 specifically deals with cultural rights, conveying that “States shall provide redress through effective mechanisms...developed in conjunction with indigenous peoples, with respect to their cultural, intellectual, religious and spiritual property taken without their free, prior and informed consent or in any violation of their laws, traditions and customs.”

In a move consistent with the pattern of mistreatment of the original people of this continent, the US and Canada refused to sign it. However, some American and Canadian academic institutions, like the University of Victoria in British Columbia and the University of Arizona, have adopted policies aimed at preventing abuse of Indigenous peoples’ cultures.

There is a huge need for research in Indian country that is aimed at addressing the many difficult issues facing tribes that result from injustices inflicted by US policies of genocide, assimilation, and marginalization. Many researchers who want to work with Native American tribes are turning to a method called community-based participatory research, in which the researcher works with the tribe to determine how best the research can help meet tribal needs.

Through the work of Evergreen’s Northwest Indian Applied Research Institute (NIARI), Evergreen is poised to eliminate the negative – and sometimes devastating – effects of academic research on Indigenous communities. NIARI is preparing to host a conference to begin the dialogue within the Evergreen community and beyond about this hidden problem. Behind the scenes, NIARI is working to enact an effective institutional research policy within Evergreen that will better serve local tribes and students.

“Weaving Research Communities Together: Research Protocols in Indian Country,” was a day-long conference organized by NIARI on April 16, 2010, at Evergreen. Renowned thinker and author of “Native Science,” Dr. Greg Cajete was the keynote speaker. The conference featured a panel of experts and afternoon workshops that students, faculty, staff and community members took part in to better understand the positive role of a researcher working with Indigenous communities.

Prior to the conference, Aleticia Tijerina, assistant director of NIARI said, “Evergreen is a premier undergraduate research institution in which students frequently do research with tribes. There are no institutional protocols in place that actively protect Native cultures from exploitation through research. It is my hope that students will come away from the conference asking how their individual research agenda fits with what the tribe wants and needs, and how will they give back to the community what they have learned.”

Shonri Begay, a student in “American Frontiers: Homelands and Empire,” is interning at NIARI as a volunteer coordinator for the conference. She expressed that her work on the conference has helped her better understand her academic work and hoped that the conference proved “eye-opening for a lot of students who have never considered these complex issues.”