Native American Student Identity

Stowe, Alexander MacKenzie

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Description

Title

Native American Student Identity

Author(s)

Stowe, Alexander MacKenzie

Issue Date

2010

Keyword(s)

• Haudenosaunee
• Identity
• Collective Awareness
• Native American Studies
• ANT300
• Syracuse
• Spring 2010

Abstract

Years ago, the Saltine Warrior was the mascot for Syracuse University; however, it was decided that the Warrior offended Native American students and inappropriately depicted Native American Students. For many, the Native American population at Syracuse University is non-apparent, and Native American students seem to have been displaced from higher education. The Haudenosaunee Promise is an attempt by SU to make a collegiate education more accessible for students from on of the Six Nations. However, the Native American students still seem invisible to most students. My interest is how the Native American population views the Haudenosaunee Promise as an entry to college, and how they maintain their relationships with other Haudenosaunee students. While they live within the boundaries of United States, these students come from their own sovereign nations. In my study of students' experiences, for those who have come through the program, I am looking to see if they share more in common with international students then with other American students.

Series/Report Name or Number

• The Ethnography of the University: Studying Scholarship in Action was designed to introduce undergraduate students to ethnographic methodologies, institutional analysis, and the research publication process. Students conducted ethnographic studies of Syracuse University Scholarship in Action projects of their choosing and had the opportunity to produce their results on the web. All the steps in the research process, from the formation of research questions to the creation of final research papers, was produced on-line at a collaborative website, Moodle, that has been created at the University of Illinois to facilitate undergraduate ethnography of the university projects. This project is titled the Ethnography of the University Initiative (EUI).
• Students were encouraged to make their work public so that their research subjects, fellow students and Syracuse community participants, would be able to comment and provide feedback on their research. The IDEALS on-line archive would enable this process to be recorded for future students in the hope that they will build on present student research. The archiving of “scholarship in action” research for ANT 300 may help Syracuse University better understands the learning outcomes of “scholarship in action” initiatives.
• It is important to remember that “The Ethnography of the University” is not only a course but also part of two larger projects, the “Imagining America Project,” a national project combining the arts, humanities and social sciences to create interdisciplinary discussions about America’s future http://www.imaginingamerica.org/ , and the University of Illinois centered project, the Ethnography of the University Initiative (EUI) http://www.eui.uiuc.edu/
• The Ethnography of the University Initiative (EUI) includes several universities and community colleges located in the state of Illinois. All of these schools are public. Syracuse University is the first non-Illinois and first private university to join the group. This class joined an inter-campus learning community in which many classes from several schools (most, however, are located at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) explore their universities and colleges ethnographically. In order to explore Syracuse University ethnographically, we needed to think about what “the university” is, what “ethnography” is, and what “scholarship in action” is. Broadly, we explored the university as a composite of prose, numerical, and visual narratives.
• The course also introduced students to ethnographic methods. The bulk of this class was devoted to students’ own ethnographic projects on a Syracuse University “Scholarship in Action” endeavor although it was possible to carry out research on other areas if students presented a good case for doing so. A wide variety of social practices and learning processes were expected to become part of what students researched.

Type of Resource

text

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