Thank you for the thoughtful and powerful response. I am sorry the 2017 conference did not do a better job of engagement. You are right in the lag/lack of respect and recognition by Anthropology writ large. Change is long overdue. There are some areas of improvement, I see the SING consortium as a significant move forward, but they remain few and far between. It was awful that my former employer (ND) failed to develop an American Indian program despite multiple faculty pushing for such an outcome. I was glad that at least my dept. formed collaborations with the Pokégnek Bodéwadmik (whose land ND sits on) while I was there. I do not yet know the landscape here at my new location, but will keep your words in front of me and try as best i can to make a difference. Thanks for your essay, your response to my comment and for not letting this be ignored.

Dear Dr. Fuentes,

Thank you for reflecting on my words. I had no idea that you helped create the theme for the 2017 AAA Conference. However, I am glad that I have your attention. At that conference, several American Indian anthropologists met in a small conference room along a back hallway at the conference center. We all were laughing and joking and then an elder academic began to discuss how we (American Indians) didn’t matter to anthropology. He had hope for the future, but his tears showed how much pain anthroplogy has caused to the small consortium of American Indian scholars.

On that note, I was at the 2013 talk where Leith Mullins spelled out why “anthropology matters”. I remember that she talked about Democratization and not De-colonization. She often said “Indigenous” and “subaltern” — but she didn’t talk about the 600+ American Indian nations that are often just outside the doors of America’s anthropology Departments. She mentioned “observatories” — which, in my mind, was a continuation of the “anthro is neutral” colonial academic model. She even quoted my advisor James Peacock who said something like: “Anthropology is needed…and if it wasn’t already here it would have to be invented”. Well, it WAS invented, on the heads of American Indians. It then helped breathe life into other disciplines that did the same suppressive work.

I interviewed for a faculty job with your former employer – ND – and as soon as I asked about working with local Native American communities…well, the air left out of the interview. Was it me? Or was it them? It would be nice to be appreciated as an American Indian scholar (not seen as a risk).

Indeed, I have asked your current employer – Princeton – why they have openly supported Black scholarship with pretty much NO attention paid to American Indian scholarship.

Thanks, again. Peace and safety.

DSL