Students concerned for future of Indigenous studies program a year after coordinator retires

Students continue to express concern over the future of Penn's Native American and Indigenous Studies minor a year after the program's coordinator and only tenured professor retired. 

In 2023, The Daily Pennsylvanian reported on student anxiety about the NAIS program's future after Coordinator Margaret Bruchac retired. Students expressed frustration over the lack of communication from the University regarding a replacement for Bruchac, the sparse Indigenous representation among NAIS faculty, and the limited number of NAIS courses available to students. 

A year later, students report similar challenges and assert there has been little done to improve the NAIS minor. 

New leadership

The Anthropology Department’s undergraduate chair Katherine Moore took over as NAIS chair after Bruchac retired. Moore said that since assuming the position, she has enjoyed meeting students, listening to their stories, and "[helping] them find new ways to express those stories.”

However, Moore explained that she requested to be relieved of the position because of other responsibilities associated with her position as the undergraduate chair of the Anthropology Department. 

Moore also expressed a desire to focus on research, explaining that she feels that she has been “getting less done” lately.

“I know that it's going to be a while until we have another faculty member who can take on this job, and so I'm ready to do it for as long as it’s needful,” Moore said. 

Moore plans to stay in the role until a new NAIS chair is appointed. Vice Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Brighid Dwyer did not respond to the DP's request for comment on whether the University has initiated a search for someone to fill the role. 

College junior and NAIS minor Carlyle Cornell expressed gratitude for Moore, but echoed her worries. 

“We love having her, and it's so wonderful — but we would really like a dedicated, full-time faculty member, Cornell said. "I can only imagine what it’s like to be doing two jobs at the same time. It must be really hard for [Moore]."  

Faculty retainment and representation

College senior and NAIS minor Safaya Smallwood told the DP that there were “no material changes” that she has witnessed in the department since Bruchac’s retirement. 

She said that to her knowledge, no new tenure track faculty members have been brought into the NAIS minor. Smallwood also touched on the lack of Native scholars involved in classes for the minor, and the  effect that has had on the learning she's been exposed to. 

“That's incredibly crucial,” Small said of tenured NAIS professors. “I feel really uncomfortable with the fact that I'm going to be graduating with an Indigenous Studies degree having taken a majority of courses that have been taught by non-Native scholars, because it's really difficult, as a non-Native scholar, to learn about the profundity of the lived experience of Native identity without having that link to an actual Native scholar.”

Moore echoed these concerns, emphasizing that NAIS is not her teaching or research area and that she does not have a strong background in the topic. 

“There's a strong sense that [an increased Native scholar presence] would be a great thing to have,” Moore said. “I'm a strong ally. I have a lot of experience. I have a lot of colleagues, but I can't provide that same connection that some people think would be the most appropriate.”

When it comes to hiring more Indigenous faculty, Moore said that there is a “a very conscious desire on the part of several academic departments to enhance hiring of Native faculty.” 

However, she added that as of right now, Penn is “just not there.” 

In a joint statement to the DP, Dwyer and the Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences Steven Fluharty wrote that a group of approximately 20 faculty and staff has met monthly for over two years to discuss support for Penn's Indigenous community. 

“[The group] discusses not only how to support NAIS, but also broader support for Native and Indigenous people at Penn and our local and national partners,” Dwyer and Fluharty wrote. 

Funding and support

Moore said that since Burchac’s retirement, there have been several changes to Penn's support of the Native community at Penn. She emphasized that she has been able to secure funding for a small number of courses to be taught and to support initiatives within the Native community at Penn. Such initiatives include the annual Powwow hosted by Natives at Penn every April and speaker events featuring Native voices.

“We're putting our stamp on a lot of different parts of the college, trying to creep into a sense of people recognizing the role of Native American studies on campus now and becoming aware of how large an issue it might be,” Moore said.

Moore added that the University has also successfully implemented including a land acknowledgement statement within Penn’s Compass program, which serves as a guide for incoming first-year students throughout the summer. The statement recognizes that the land that Penn currently resides on belongs to Indigenous people. 

Student recruitment

Both Dwyer and Moore also discussed Penn's efforts to recruit Indigenous students for Penn. 

According to Moore, the admissions office has been “recruiting heavily” in parts of the country where there are large numbers of Indigenous students in public high schools and schools on reservations. She said that this has resulted in increasing Indigenous representation in Penn’s undergraduate student population.

The DP could not confirm that representation has increased. The University does not release a racial demographic breakdown of its incoming classes.

Cornell, the Natives at Penn treasurer, also expressed optimism for the program thanks to increased interest in NAP.

“There’s also a bigger interest because Natives at Penn has been growing recently, and we’ve had a lot of freshmen who are pretty involved,” she said. “We're optimistic that hopefully the increase in interest will also bring more resources for the minor.”

Dwyer said that Penn has continued to partner with College Horizons — a non-profit with the goal of increasing Indigenous student enrollment in universities. The program brought 100 Native high school students to Penn’s campus this past summer. 

“We are excited about the interest that has grown in incorporating Native and Indigenous perspectives into all areas of scholarship and teaching within SAS,” Dwyer wrote to the DP.

Study-abroad conflicts

Smallwood and College senior Erin Marble told the DP about the challenges they ran into with both completing the NAIS minor and studying abroad.

The minor requires the completion of six courses, and by Smallwood’s junior fall, she had completed only two courses for the NAIS minor. During her study abroad, she would not be completing any courses that would count towards the NAIS minor. In order to still complete the minor, she did an independent study with Bruchac. She and Marble mapped Lenapehoking — the land that is now known as Pennsylvania. 

Smallwood acknowledged that completing the minor may still have been possible without credit from an independent study, though it would have been more difficult. There were three courses offered in the NAIS minor this fall and two that will be offered in the spring of next year, with one course in the spring being a repeat course from the fall semester. 

Smallwood said that she “technically” could have completed her NAIS minor credits by taking her four remaining courses in her senior year. However, it would have been challenging due to requirements for her major and her honors thesis.  

Marble, who also studied abroad, said that she was “lucky” that she had already taken the majority of the courses necessary to complete her NAIS minor. When she came back to Penn from her study abroad, she only had one remaining NAIS course. 

However, she said that she encountered difficulties in other aspects of the minor.

“The lack of so-called 'thematic courses' has been the biggest challenge for me — there are generally not many offered, and since I am in the final semester of my studies, it is extremely difficult to work around the required biology courses that I still have left,” Marble wrote in an email to the DP.

Scaling back the program

Since Burchac retired, NAIS has stopped accepting graduate students. During Burchac's tenure, she recruited and trained graduate students alongside a couple of other professors — most of whom have retired or moved to other schools. 

Moore said that to rebuild the graduate-level program would require “significant faculty hiring.” However, students hope to see the program grow.

The NAIS program has only offered a minor since its inception, but Smallwood said that the development of an NAIS major is “100% essential.”

“It’s not enough to just have Natives at Penn,” Smallwood said. “We also need to be talking about the dynamics of Indigenous Studies and indigeneity within academia and without a major, the program is always kind of going to be relegated to a background position, at least in my opinion.”

Moore, however, said that she “wouldn’t seek a major at this point” and that she “does not hear that request.”

“Right now, I’m happy knowing I have a growing number of [students pursuing] minors, but the thing that really makes me happy is the growing number of people who've been exposed to the coursework at all,” Moore said. “People coming in, if they take one course, then that's a different voice than they have heard at Penn any other place, from a personal point of view, from a legal and kind of historical point of view, from a programmatic point of view.”