Angela Gonzales
Katrin H. Lamon Resident Scholar 1997-98
Who Is an Indian?
Who and what is American Indian? Since 1960, when the United States
Bureau of Census began asking people to identify themselves by
race or ethnic group,
the American Indian population has nearly tripled. More and more people are
choosing to self-identify as American Indians—a practice called "ethnic
switching." At the same time, there are increasing efforts within the
American Indian population to regulate identity and access to resources. Unlike
other ethnic groups, who are eager to expand their definition and increase
their official numbers, many American Indians seek actively to regulate ethnic
group boundaries.
Before European contact, it was easy to answer the question "Who
is Indian?" because nobody was. "Indian" is a European-derived
word and concept. Prior to contact the indigenous inhabitants of North America
were simply members of their own sociopolitical and cultural groups—what
later came to be labeled "tribes." Europeans used their own values
and ideas, conceptual categories, and explanatory frameworks to define American
Indians, and their definitions eventually became codified in United States federal
laws. Whether classifying people collectively as "Indian tribes" or
individually according to "blood quantum," the federal government,
through its judicial system, has defined American Indians in unique and contradictory
ways.
It should come as little surprise, states Angela Gonzales,
that the self-definition of American Indians has been shaped in part by the complexity
of federal law. A tribally enrolled Hopi, Gonzales experiences these complications
in many personal ways. "My Hopi card," she says, "states that
the tribe has the right to revoke my membership at any time."
In her doctoral dissertation, "American Indian Identity
Matters: The Political Economy of Ethnic Boundaries," Gonzales examines
American Indian identity within three different contexts—college admissions
and financial aid policies, the marketing and sale of American Indian art, and
tribal enrollment policies—to focus on contemporary American Indian identity
and the social, political, and economic aspects of ethnic group boundaries.
Gonzales asserts that race-based public policies and programs
that give preferential consideration to designated minority groups have raised
problematic questions of entitlement and access. "In my work, I'm looking
at ethnically tied resources. But in a larger sense, I want to create a space
where we can talk openly about ethnic fraud, about self-identify, about being
identified and stereotyped by others. I'm interested in the difference between
identity and identification."
Her residency at SAR offered Gonzales an unanticipated benefit:
access to the New Mexico tribes. "I was able to use them for case studies
in the dissertation," she says.
"SAR's offer of unencumbered time was invaluable. The
support was amazing—from a computer technician on call to social events
with other scholars. But most importantly," Gonzalez notes with a smile, "they
knew when to leave us alone."
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Scholars 1997-98
