Before 2020, the Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS) minor at the University of Connecticut was in disrepair. Most classes had not been taught in years, and many of the faculty had left.
Furthermore, there had been no attempts to create permanent relationships with tribes and no Native American community outreach programs had lasted.
When anthropologist and archaeologist Nathan Acebo was hired in the summer of 2020 to help rebuild the program, he realized he had a lot of work to do.
“The minor wasn’t functional. A lot of the faculty who started it had left for a variety of reasons and none of them were Native people. There were tons of classes that hadn’t been taught in years and we don’t even know who was teaching them,” Acebo said.
Acebo, now an assistant professor of anthropology and NAIS at UConn, was a part of a cluster hire in 2020 meant to rebuild the minor and create relationships with Native American students and tribes across the state.
According to Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Kate Capshaw, the hire was made up of three Indigenous professors: Sandy Grande, a political science and NAIS professor, Kat Milligan-McClellan, a microbiology assistant professor and Acebo.
Capshaw said the Dean’s Office realized that they had never “intentionally engaged with Native American Indigenous studies.”
“It’s pretty profound that the university has not had any kind of institutional attention to Native American Indigenous studies or communities. This was our first kind of effort to try and address the violence and wounds that we have not paid much attention to, like the people who are here on this land and also building relationships across the country,” Capshaw said.
The cluster hire went on to create the Native American Indigenous Studies Initiative, which worked to create new classes, engage in community-based research, build relationships with tribes in Connecticut and mentor students.
According to the Land Grab Connecticut, a website created by Native American UConn students to educate people on the Indigenous land UConn resides on as a land grant university, UConn resides on the territory of the Eastern Pequot, Golden Hill Paugussett, Lenape, Mashantucket Pequot, Mohegan, Nipmuc and Schaghticoke Peoples. Capshaw said by building relationships with Native American communities, UConn hopes to educate students on the past.
There’s no way in which we can remediate the violence of the past, but we can build so that our students understand that history and that our students are engaged with how we can work and move together to support Indigenous communities
Kate Capshaw,Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
“There’s no way in which we can remediate the violence of the past, but we can build so that our students understand that history and that our students are engaged with how we can work and move together to support Indigenous communities,” Capshaw said.
Since the cluster hire, there have been seven new professors added to the NAIS initiative and many changes have been made to the program, according to Acebo. In 2021, the professors received a large General Education Curriculum Development grant that allowed them to create the first general education Indigenous Studies class — Anthropology 1095: Introduction to Decolonization and Indigenous Worlds. The pilot version of the class begins in fall and will be taught by Acebo and several other professors.
“The class is meant to introduce students to things like: What is decolonization? What is the current state of things happening with Indigenous folks? So that’s a big change,” Acebo said.
Another new program coming to UConn is the Department of Social and Critical Inquiry. According to Acebo, the department is an ethnic studies scholarship department that combines Asian American studies, women and gender studies, American studies and the NAIS Initiative. The department launches July 1 and plans to work towards providing longevity to the NAIS Initiative.
Acebo explained that through this department the NAIS minor now has a place to reside and not be spread between different departments. Over the past few years, whenever he and his colleagues wanted to create something new, they would have to rely on other departments such as the Political Science Department or School of Education to host their events or classes. Now they have the freedom to design their classes how they want and in the style that they can provide as Indigenous professors.
“Now we’re given the space to design not only our classes the way that we want to do it, but also in an Indigenous style which is a critical perspective. It also allows us to do advanced graduate training. Eventually, we’ll have a PhD program, we’ll have a major and we’ll be able to roll our funding into our programs,” Acebo said.
The NAIS program and the university also secured a number of grants last year, including the National Endowment for the Humanities grant with Connecticut Humanities, which focuses on practicing recognition and repair across minority communities, Acebo said.
“That allowed us to do things like not just spread awareness of indigenous issues in the northeast, but then host programs that engage our tribal partners in the area, provide cultural showcases, and host workshops to build different inroads for program building between the university and tribes,” Acebo said.
We’re trying to fix hundreds of years of pain, suffering and neglect in a lot of ways.
Nathan Acebo, Anthropologist and Archaeologist
One such program that professors have brought to UConn over the years is IndigiPalooza, where “native intellectuals from across the country come and think through key questions,” according to Capshaw.
“The professors just did this in tandem with a powwow a couple of weeks ago. And it was phenomenal. They’ve done so much, even in the past three years and they have a great vision for what comes next too,” Capshaw said.
Because of the many new developments occurring within the NAIS program, it is in a transition period. Acebo says that through these new developments he and his colleagues hope to build a program that will last long term.
“We’re trying to fix hundreds of years of pain, suffering and neglect in a lot of ways. So, becoming a department is a major thing because it allows us to formalize our curriculum and make it permanent,” Acebo said.