NAIS Fellowship
In the fall of 2021, the journal Native American & Indigenous Studies (NAIS) launched an annual Writing/Mentoring Fellowship Program.
The Fellowship seeks to support emerging scholars — such as graduate students, early career faculty, and community-based scholars — working within or across the international, interdisciplinary arenas of Indigenous Studies. We particularly encourage applications from emergent Indigenous scholars, especially from communities or research areas currently underrepresented in the field. Fellows are matched with a Mentor, participate in a series of virtual professional development workshops over the academic year from September through April, and workshop a manuscript for submission to a professional academic journal (submission to NAIS is not required but is warmly encouraged).
The NAIS journal editors and Editorial Board hope to host a culminating gathering at NAISA’s annual meeting, whether virtual or in person. Fellows receive a small stipend of $600 to assist their travel to an in-person NAISA meeting.
ELIGIBILITY
- The Fellowship is designed for NAISA members including community-based scholars, advanced graduate students, untenured scholars without an institutional affiliation, and pre-tenure early-career faculty working to publish in a professional academic journal.
- Co-authors may apply – please submit one application and attach a resumé or C.V. for each co-author.
- Authors who have previously published in NAIS are not eligible. The committee will not consider work that is under active consideration by any publisher.
The Call for Applications will appear yearly in late spring/early summer, with an approximate due date of August 1 each year.
2022-2023 Projects, Fellows, and Mentors
The Editors and Editorial Board of NAIS, the journal of Native American and Indigenous Studies Association, are pleased to announce the Fellows and Mentors of the 2022-2023 NAIS journal Writing & Mentoring Fellowship. The Fellowship Committee awarded 6 (six) Fellowships to 7 (seven) early-career Indigenous Studies scholars (one project includes two co-authors). Below you will see a listing of the selected Fellows and their projects, and the Mentor with whom they have been paired (along with any tribal affiliations). The selected Fellows’ interdisciplinary areas of study include history; education; geography; and science, technology, and society. Their projects address a wide range of topics grounded in Indigenous Studies theories and practices. These include, among others, #MMIW, new approaches to archival studies, infrastructures and natural resources, boarding school experiences, pedagogy, community engagement, recognition, land claims, and Native women’s activism. We are especially grateful for the enthusiasm of the Mentors – highly regarded senior scholars in Indigenous Studies – whose willingness to participate in this important endeavor ensures the future health of Indigenous Studies.
Kelly McDonough & K. Tsianina Lomawaima
NAIS Editors
Project Title
“The Case of Elizabeth Locklear: Seeing #MMIW in the Archives”
Fellow
- Jessica Locklear (Lumbee), Ph.D. student, History, Emory University
Mentor
- Alejandra Dubcovsky (University of California-Riverside)
Project Title
“Meeting at the Headwaters: Confluence, Yana Wana, and Water Writing as Methodology”
Fellow
- Pablo Montes (Chichimeca Guamares/P’urépecha) Assistant Professor, Curriculum Studies, Texas Christian University (Ph.D. Cultural Studies in Education, University of Texas at Austin);
- Marlene Villanueva (Pame-Chichimeca), Ph.D. candidate, Social Justice Education, University of Toronto
Mentor
- Elizabeth (Eli) Sumida Huaman (Wanka/Quechua), University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
Project Title
“whik’ixoniwhe’: The Indigenous History of Dos Rios and Ah Pah Dams in Northern California, 1951-1970”
Fellow
- Brittani Orona (Hupa), Assistant Professor of American Indian Studies at San Diego State University (Ph.D. Native American Studies, University of California, Davis)
Mentor
- Erika Bsumek, University of Texas at Austin
Project Title
“Navigating Archives of Colonial Power with Indigenous Methods
Fellow
- Meredith Palmer (Tuscarora), Presidential Postdoctoral Fellowship, Science & Technology Studies, Department & American Indian & Indigenous Studies Program, Cornell University (Ph.D. Dept. of Geography, University of California, Berkeley)
Mentor
- Noelani Arista (Kanaka Maoli), McGill University
Project Title
“Mi’kmaw Women’s Sovereignty Assertion Beyond the Politics of Recognition: Examining the Potential of Non-Status Liminality and Land Claim in Nova Scotia, 1974-1985”
Fellow
- Mercedes Peters (Mi’kmaq), Ph.D. Candidate in History, University of British Columbia
Mentor
- Michael Witgen (Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe), Columbia University
Project Title
“Containing Engagement: Strategic Approaches to Community Engagement for Conservation Gene Drive in Hawaiʻi”
Fellow
- Riley Tiantingfong (CHamoru), 2021-2022 Postdoctoral researcher, Public Health, University of California, San Diego (2021 Ph.D. Communication, University of California, San Diego)
Mentor
- Tina Taitano Delisle (CHamoru), University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
2021-2022 Projects, Fellows, and Mentors
The Editors and Editorial Board of NAIS, the journal of Native American & Indigenous Studies, are pleased to announce the Fellows and Mentors of the inaugural year of the journal’s Writing & Mentoring Fellowship. Each of the 44 applications in a highly competitive pool was read and ranked by the two Editors and 15 members of the NAIS Editorial Board. A Committee composed of the Editors and 4 Editorial Board members then made the final award of 6 Fellowships. We are especially grateful for the Mentors’ enthusiastic willingness to participate in this important endeavor aimed at supporting early-career Indigenous Studies scholars.
Kelly McDonough & K. Tsianina Lomawaima
NAIS Editors
Project Title
“Hpecasni Unspeic’iyapi: Adult Language Acquisition at Sitting Bull College”
There is a growing need in Native communities for working-age adults who are proficient in Indigenous language. The “restoring” of this “lost generation” (Olthuis et al 2013), is, however, understudied. To address this gap in research, this article describes and examines the Hpecasni Unspeic’iyapi, an adult language learning aspect of the Lakota Language Capacity Building Initiative. In the spring of 2017 Sitting Bull College, a tribally controlled college on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation was awarded NSF Award #1664416 to implement the Lakota Language Capacity Building Initiative (LLCBI).
Fellows
- Nacole Walker (Hunkpapa Lakota and Phabaksa Dakota) Ph.D. student, Indigenous Language Revitalization, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada, and Director of the Standing Rock Language and Culture Institute;
- Elliot Bannister Masters of Education student, Sitting Bull College, and Language Specialist, Standing Rock Language and Culture Institute;
- Tasha Hauff, Ph.D. (Mnicoujou Lakota) Assistant Professor, Lakota and American Indian and Indigenous Studies, South Dakota State University.
“We reflected on the story we wanted to tell and divided it into three, focusing on just one of them for our first publication. Jani has been an awesome motivator, holding us accountable to our goals, and helping us keep everything in perspective.”
Mentor
- Jani K. T. Wilson (Ngāi Taiwhakāea, Ngāti Awa, Ngā Puhi, Mātaatua), Massey University, Wellington, Aotearoa – New Zealand.
Project Title
“Kūpono Ka Lā I Ka Lolo: Kanaka Chronemics and (Re)setting Hawaiian Time”
This paper redefines “Hawaiian Time” by analyzing traditional time-related concepts from two Hawaiian stories recorded in ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi (the Hawaiian language) by 19th-century Kanaka Maoli writer, J. W. K. Kaualilinoe. This analysis on a never-before-studied topic provides a glimpse into what I call Kanaka Chronemics or traditional Hawaiian understandings of time. How did pre-contact Kānaka track time? What natural/man-made instruments were used by Kānaka to observe time? How can we apply these traditional concepts of time to current Hawaiian language and culture revitalization efforts?
Fellow
- Jacob Hau‘oli Ikaika Poʻokela Lorenzo-Elarco (Kanaka Maoli), Master of Arts in Hawaiian Language (2021) University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.
“The NAIS Fellowship, especially my mentor Arini, helped me to consider materials that I had not previously explored. I am currently exploring these sources and revising the draft before submission.”
Mentor
- Arini Loader (Ngāti Raukawa, Ngāti Whakaue, Te Whānau-a-Apanui), Victoria University of Wellington, Aotearoa (known also by its colonial-settler name of New Zealand)
Project Title
“Living Historiographies: McGirt v. Oklahoma, Settler Historical Production and Choctaw Archives”
This paper examines histories at multiple levels: how Choctaw “histories” have built upon oft-misguided anthropological findings, the actual events of history sourced from under-utilized sets of archival material, the history of the existing archival sources, and how those sources have been used in Choctaw historiography, and how now-canonical histories were written from a narrow subset of archival sources. By examining the gap between the existing massive archive of Choctaw-produced material and the canon of Choctaw history, I show how these narrow understandings of Choctaw history paved the way for the State of Oklahoma’s current legal arguments in McGirt v. Oklahoma.
Fellow
- Megan A. Baker (Choctaw Nation). Historic Preservation Office, Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. Ph.D. student in Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles.
“I worked on revising a dissertation chapter into a draft to be submitted for publication. It was incredibly helpful to have a mentor to guide how to best showcase the interdisciplinarity of my piece.”
Mentor
- Caroline Wigginton, University of Mississippi
Project Title
“Concentrated Trauma and the Reservation Effect”
Drawing from the case of the Yurok and Hoopa Valley Reservations of northern California, I show how “the reservation” is the seat of deep spiritual and personal meaning in present day, yet also is a place where social inequalities cluster, especially violence, health comorbidities and polysubstance use disorder epidemics including methamphetamine and OxyContin. Drawing from ethnographic in-depth interviews across 1,000+ exposure hours and drafted in collaboration with the Yurok Tribal Court, I theorize a “reservation effect” whereby “concentrated trauma” sits alongside the sacred such that those who seek the latter must first navigate the former.
Fellow
- Blythe K. George (Yurok Tribe) Ph.D., Sociology and Social Policy 2020 Harvard University; Assistant Professor of Sociology—UC Merced.
“Participating in this fellowship helped me refine a manuscript that will tangibly build connections between my home discipline of Sociology and that of Native American and Indigenous Studies. As an early career scholar, such mentorship is key to my professional development and I thank NAISA for making these resources available to each of us. To be in a wholly Indigenous academic space is few and far between but this fellowship offers just that, and I’m deeply grateful.”
Mentor
- Boyd Cothran, York University
Project Title
“Indigenous Self-Identification as Settler State Elimination of Indigenous Peoples from Mestizo Territories in Latin America”
This project foregrounds understudied non-Indigenous mestizo territories like El Salvador where settlers have long-established, secured, and depoliticized their occupation and possession of Indigenous lands. Drawing on the case of El Salvador, this article will demonstrate how international discourses of Indigenous rights intersect with national ideologies of mestizaje and multiculturalism to facilitate the settler state erasure of Indigenous peoples from mestizo territories throughout Latin America.
Fellow
- Hector M. Callejas (mestizo Salvadoran-American raised in a Mexico immigrant community in Sacramento, California), Ph.D. candidate in Ethnic Studies, University of California, Berkeley.
“During the fellowship, I revised a draft for an article. I will submit the article for publication in a journal in Anthropology. I also found and cultivated an intellectual community within Native American and Indigenous studies. Finally, I received constructive criticism on how to frame my article for a Native American and Indigenous studies audience.”
Mentor
- Alyosha Goldstein, University of New Mexico
Project Title
“Choosing Termination: Guy Jennison and the Ottawa Tribe of Oklahoma”
“Choosing Termination” demonstrates Chief Jennison’s advocacy for termination represented a deliberate rejection of the constraints and restrictions imposed by federal authority and will show how Jennison successfully engineered termination to exchange one collection of colonial entanglements for an alternative, less intrusive set of impositions that accorded the Ottawas greater control over their internal affairs and future. Taking an ethnobiographical approach, this article analyzes Jennison’s perspective and challenges the dichotomy of victimization or assimilation that dominates historiographical accounts of tribal termination.
Fellow
- David Dry (enrolled member of the Ottawa Tribe), Ph.D. candidate in History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
“During my fellowship year, I worked closely with Dr. Jeani O’Brien to significantly reframe and reorganize my article draft. As a result of her detailed comments and our constructive conversations, the article now has a stronger focus on how the Ottawa experience can expand current conceptions of the termination era. At the end of the fellowship year, the article was submitted for publication, and it is being improved further with helpful feedback from peer reviewers and an invitation to revise and resubmit. This fellowship has been one of the highlights of my academic career and a transformative experience in terms of how I approach academic writing. It has provided me with guidance and confidence to move forward with the work ahead.”
Mentor
- Jean M. O’Brien (White Earth Ojibwe), University of Minnesota-Twin Cities