UC Davis experts: Native Americans

With one of the few full-fledged Native American studies departments in the nation, UC Davis has many faculty members who can comment on topics regarding Native Americans. Spanish-language media should note that several are Spanish speakers. If you need assistance on similar topics, please call Claudia Morain, News Service, (530) 752-9841, cmmorain@ucdavis.edu.

Current topics

• Preserving Native American languages
• Dance in the Americas
• Mixtec immigrant communities
• Indigenous peoples, economic/political development
• Mexican indigenous writers and cultural traditions
• Natives and natural resources

Historical topics

• Ethnohistory of America
• Racism, colonialism and Native American history
• Native Americans and early colony history
• Population genetics, colonization of the New World
• Hunter-gatherers and culture transmission

CURRENT TOPICS

Preserving native languages

Professor Martha Macri is a linguistic anthropologist specializing in Native American languages and Mesoamerican scripts. She uses complex databases and student initiative to protect native languages throughout the Americas. Based in the Native American and anthropology departments, Macri also teaches about and coordinates university outreach for retaining native languages. She can talk about how graduate students in the UC Davis Native American studies graduate program are working with various tribes in California to help them recover their native languages. Macri also directs the Maya Hieroglyphic Database Project, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Science Foundation. The project is putting the all the known MayaN texts into a graphics database to increase public access. She is enrolled in the Cherokee Nation. Contact: Martha Macri, Native American Studies, (530) 752-7086, mjmacri@ucdavis.edu.

Dance in the Americas

Zoila Mendoza, associate professor in Native American studies, is a sociocultural anthropologist who studies performance and dance in the Americas and Africa. She has looked at festivals, carnivals and dance troupes, looking at how race, ethnicity and politics play out in dance. "Dance is a whole world, looking at conflicts that emerge based on gender, nationalism, regionalism and transationalism as they define a local identity," she says. She can talk about the cultural significance of folk dances and their choreography, costumes, dance rituals and the music used in dance. Contact: Zoila Mendoza (fluent in Spanish), Native American studies, (530) 754-9283, zsmendoza@ucdavis.edu.

Mixtec immigrant communities

James Grieshop, specialist and lecturer in human and community development, is an anthropologist with extensive applied research and educational experience with Mexican immigrant communities in California. In the past 10 years he has completed a number of collaborative projects with the Mixtec immigrant community in the Central Valley of California and in Mixtec areas of Mexico. A primary focus of his work has been on the incorporation of Mixtec into local communities and schools as well as their ongoing cross-border connections to home communities in Oaxaca. He has used print and film media to document and communicate the stories of Mixtec immigrant families in California. Contact: James Grieshop, Human and Community Development, (fluent in Spanish) (530) 752-3008, jigrieshop@ucdavis.edu.

Indigenous peoples, economic/political development

Native American studies professor Stefano Varese is an anthropologist with an extended research background in Mexico. His research interests focus on indigenous peoples, economic and political development, indigenous transnational migration to the U.S. and California, and critical theory of cultural pluralism in Mexico and Latin America. He lived and worked in Mexico and the state of Oaxaca during 14 years as a researcher for the National Institute of Anthropology and History and as director of the Regional Unit of Popular Cultures, a branch of the Ministry of Education. Varese has been consultant for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the Comisión Mexicana de Apoyo a los Refugiados in Southeastern Mexico during the Guatemalan civil war and the crisis of Maya political refugees. In the late 1990s, under the sponsorship of the International Fund for Agricultural Development, he co-authored with UC Berkeley's professor Alain de Janvry a study on the impact of 1992 agricultural reforms on peasants and indigenous peoples of Mexico. Varese directs the Indigenous Research Center of the Americas. Contact: Stefano Varese, (fluent in Spanish) Native American Studies, (530) 752-0357 and (530) 752-3237, svarese@ucdavis.edu.

Mexican indigenous writers and cultural traditions

Inés Hernández-Avila's scholarship and creative work focuses on cultural/intellectual connections between Chicanas, Native American women and indigenous women of Mexico. The professor of Native American studies is also known for her work on issues of identity and representation in relation to indigenismo (being indigenous) and mestizaje (being of mixed race) in the Chicana/o community. Her current projects include a book looking at the roots of "danza Azteca" in the United States in the Conchero dance tradition of Mexico and another on a national movement of native writers in indigenous languages in Mexico known as Escritores en Lenguas Indigenas or Writers of Indigenous Languages. Hernandez-Avila directs the UC Davis Chicana/Latina Research Center and is a member of the UC Committee on Latino Research and a poet. She is affiliated with the Nez-Perce Nation. Contact: Ines Hernandez-Avila (fluent in Spanish), Native American Studies, (530) 752-4394, ighernandez@ucdavis.edu.

Natives and natural resources

Suzana Sawyer, assistant professor of anthropology at UC Davis, examines struggles over resources in the Ecuadorian Amazon, focusing on conflicts over land and petroleum development among indigenous peoples, the state, and multinational oil companies. She explores how lowland peoples have challenged neoliberal economic policies to privatize their lands and increase petroleum production within territory claimed by the indigenous people. In a country such as Ecuador, struggles over resources represent occasions for redefining the terms of citizenship, nation and sovereignty in a globalizing world. Sawyer is writing a book titled, "Crude Chronicles: Indigenous Politics, Multinational Oil, and Neoliberalism in Ecuador." Contact: Suzana Sawyer (fluent in Spanish), Anthropology, (530) 752-2557, smsawyer@ucdavis.edu.

HISTORICAL TOPICS

Ethnohistory of America

Historian Steven Crum is a professor of Native American studies and author of "The Road on Which We Came: A History of the Western Shoshone" (1994). He can talk about the ethnohistory of North America and Native American higher education. Crum is the foremost authority in the country on the Western Shoshone, and he is currently working with the Nevada State Library on reviewing its Native American collections. In his book, Crum presents the Shoshoni as an active people in the 19th and 20th centuries in defending their territory and rejecting assimilationist policies. Crum is enrolled in the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes of the Duck Valley Indian Reservation, Owyhee, Nev. Contact: Steven Crum, Native American Studies, (530) 752-6488, sjcrum@ucdavis.edu.

Racism, colonialism and Native American history