_NAS Graduate Student Christine Willie has been accepted to participate in the "Decolonizing Knowledge and Power: Postcolonial Studies, Decolonial Horizons" Summer Program in Barcelona, Spain.

The program is sponsored by the Center of Study and Investigations for Global Dialogues.  From their website: The international Summer School, “Decolonizing Knowledge and Power,” is an undertaking that aims at enlarging the scope of the conversation (analysis and investigation) of the hidden agenda of modernity (that is, coloniality) in the sphere of knowledge and higher education. This course is offered through the Center of Study and Investigation for Global Dialogues, in Barcelona, Spain, in collaboration with the Ethnic Studies Program at the University of California, Berkeley. The seminar will be held at the UAB-Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, Casa de la Convalescencia (Hospital de Sant Pau) .


Congratulations Christine!

Dissertation Proposal, Family, Sheep, Weaving, and Roller Coasters

By: Christine M. Willie

As a recipient of the Social Science Research Council Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship (SSRC DPDF), I began my summer attending the SSRC Spring workshop held in Monterrey, California. There, I met my Global Indigenous Politics cohort. With the help of our two research field advisors, Dr. Tony Lucero and Dr. Brett Gustafson, we spent four days further developing our proposals, preparing for preliminary fieldwork experience, and explored the beauty of Monterrey. 

After the workshop, I traveled by New Jersey to visit with family. Although time passed quickly, I did manage to unwind from the spring quarter and watch Iron Man with my nephew about 15 times. Before I knew it, I had to say goodbye and head to Arizona and Diné Bikeyah (Navajo Nation). 

Once back in AZ, I visited with my grandparents, aunties, uncle, and cousins in Tolani Lake, Winslow, Phoenix, and Tucson. Then, I headed to Tsaile to attend a Traditional Diné Sheep Butchery Workshop that was part of the yearly Sheep Is Life event. During this weeklong event I met many members of the sponsoring organization Diné be’ Iiná: The Navajo Lifeway, Inc (DBI). We learned about the Churro Sheep, its role to Diné, and enjoyed everyone’s company and stories. During this week, I also began the journey of tracking down the process of securing the Navajo Nation’s approval to conduct research (NN HHRB). 

Although, I found really helpful advice from my bizhí, members of DBI, faculty at Diné College, the Navajo Nation Human Research Review Board, and the Navajo Nation Historic Preservation Department, I was informed that the process could take as long as a year. So I started research for the applications right away. 

Following the workshop, I drove to Tucson to visit my bizhí and cousin. While down there I hung out at cafes near UofA, ate sushi for the first time, read Craig Womack’s Red on Red, andvisited Biosphere 2. 

After my mini-vacation week, I returned back to the rez, began research in the archives of the Navajo Nation Library, and continued my course work at Diné College. I took Navajo Language and Weaving classes on the Tsaile and Window Rock campuses. 

Although my nalí is a weaver, I never learned the whole process of weaving. This summer, she passed down some of her tools to me and I began. Learning from her and attending classes with other weavers, I wove my first rug. This was my biggest accomplishment throughout the summer. I gifted my first rug to her and now I am weaving a rug for my parents.

One weekend my partner, Diego, came to visit. We went to Chaco Canyon, Albuquerque, and Ganado. Playing the roles of tourist, we photographed everything, hiked in canyons, wandered around cities, and took in the air that had just begun to clear up after the devastating summer wild fires. During Diego’s visit, he participated in his first sheep butchery, sponsored by DBI. I don’t know if he enjoys mutton as much as I do, but he definitively had a great time. My dad came out to visit too. We spent time at my nali’s house visiting family, barbequing, chatting, playing cards, and eating mutton stew.

After two months on the rez with friends and family, it was time to return back to Davis to teach an Intro to Native Literatures summer session class. I drove from Tolani Lake to Davis with my cousin, who is the craziest driver in the world. Although I almost died on the ride, I was glad he was there because it made leaving Arizona less depressing than usual. In Davis, I began synthesizing my initial findings from my archival research at the Navajo Nation Library, started IRB applications, and finalized my NAS5 Fall 2011 syllabus. It wasn’t all work though. With my NAS cohort, we went camping, road the roller coasters at Six Flags, enjoyed white wine, and avoided becoming bear snacks. I even found time to attend one of my best friend’s wedding and barrel race with my horse, Jigsaw. 

My summer ended just as it began, meeting up with my SSRC DPDF Global Indigenous Politics cohort for our final workshop in Philadelphia. Over the four-day workshop, we continued to edit each other’s grant proposals, discuss the new directions of our dissertation projects, and share exciting stories from our taste of fieldwork experience. Although we headed back to our distinct departments from universities located all around the United States, our collaborations will continue and we look forward to meeting up at the 2012 NAISA meeting.  

I feel as if my project is beginning to become more concrete. As I envision an outline, I can’t help but compare this dissertation process to weaving. My bizhí wrote about this relationship between her academic work and weaving in the acknowledgements of her Ph.D. dissertation: “Linguistics is like weaving. You find one strand of color and follow it through the rug. You can’t follow every strand you want. For a weaver, it was easier to investigate one strand at a time […] To my Grandmother, there is more than one way to weave.” My loom is warped; the edge cords are in place; now, it is time for me to pick one strand of color and follow it through. Which color will I start with?

About Christine Willie: Yá’át’ééh. Shí éí Christine Willie yinishyé. Dóone’é nishlínígíí éí Italian nishlí, Kinyaa’áanii báshíshchíín, Italian dashicheii, Tséníjíkiní dashinálí. Kótéego ólta'í nishlí. Ahé´hee. Christine is Italian and Diné. She holds a B.A. in Spanish and Foreign Language Education (Rowan University), M.A. in Latin American Literature (University of Maryland, College Park) and is currently a Ph.D. student in Native American Studies (UCDavis). Her research interests include Indigenous epistemologies and philosophies, Native American literatures, colonial and post-colonial studies, decolonization methodologies, weavings, and sheep. more

UCD Nas Grad Student Cutcha Risling Baldy (Hupa, Karuk, Yurok) was awarded the Ford Foundation Pre-Doctoral Fellowship. The Ford Foundation Fellowship awards are offered at the Predoctoral, Dissertation and Postdoctoral levels.  Fellowships are awarded in a national competition. The fellowship is awarded for three years.

From the website:  Through its Fellowship Programs, the Ford Foundation seeks to increase the diversity of the nation’s college and university faculties by increasing their ethnic and racial diversity, to maximize the educational benefits of diversity, and to increase the number of professors who can and will use diversity as a resource for enriching the education of all students.

Find out more about Cutcha on her website.

NAS Graduate Student Christine Willie has received a Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship (DPDF) from the Social Science Research Council for her project Unheard Memories and Contested Spaces: Diné Historiography and the Spanish Arrival [ project summary ]

With this fellowship students will acquire tools and skills for designing dissertation projects that are methodologically sophisticated, ethically engaged, and politically attuned to Indigenous challenges to colonial legacies and enduring inequalities.

READ MORE about Christine here.

About:
 DPDF Student Fellowship Competition > DPDF Competition 2011 This DPDF research field on Global Indigenous Politics invites work that contributes to the examination of challenges faced by Indigenous Peoples through critical consideration of relationships between Indigenous Peoples and conventional models of politics and scholarship. Several ideas unite this field. First, indigeneity is not associated with primitive, romantic, or pre-modern rural worlds; Indigenous Peoples are as modern (or post-modern) as anyone else. Second, Indigenous politics is and has always been multi-scalar, articulating the local and global. Third, Indigenous Peoples are not passive objects of research, but active agents in the making, understanding, and decolonizing of the world. Finally, the stakes of Indigenous politics are high, involving issues like resources and territory, gender and racial politics, and state and Native regimes of law, rights, and sovereignty.

These themes raise questions about the epistemologies and practices of both Indigenous politics and academic work. How do Native forms of knowledge production provide alternative strategies for narrating histories, organizing struggle, and theorizing politics? How do Indigenous Peoples organize and represent themselves in debates over citizenship, resources, and participation? How have national and international regimes of recognition affected struggles for equality, inclusion, and self-determination? How do tensions within Indigenous movements shape these dynamics? Why have these struggles yielded a variety of outcomes?