NYU will establish a Center for Indigenous Studies this coming spring, according to a recent announcement from Interim Provost Georgina Dopico. Under the new center, the university will also establish an Indigenous Studies major — currently it is only offered as a minor.
“Our university is situated in a place that was — and, crucially, continues to be — the home of Indigenous people,” Dopico said in a written statement to WSN. “Indigenous Studies is a vibrant area of scholarship and community partnership that we very much want to strengthen here.”
Feedback from students and faculty — notably members of NYU’s Native Studies Forum and the Native American and Indigenous Student Group on campus — helped guide plans to create the center. In an email to WSN, NAISG said that given the university’s presence on unceded Lenape land, which spans more than 192 years, and NYU’s record of issuing land acknowledgements without concrete action, the center should have been established earlier.
“The fact that we are finally being able to have a space dedicated specifically to Native/Indigenous needs is as amazing as it is overdue,” the group wrote in the statement. “NAISG hopes that the center’s creation is just the beginning of a sincere partnership between NYU and its Native and Indigenous communities.”
NAISG Advocacy Equity and Policy Chair Sariah Vaioleti said the group sees the announcement as standing in opposition to NYU’s actions regarding the ongoing war between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
“We see the post order, first a statement of full support of Israel, and then the creation of an Indigenous Center, made by NYU to be irrevocably hypocritical,” Vaioleti said. “The fact that our center’s creation, something our community has worked tirelessly for, is paired with NYU’s support of a colonial apartheid state is unthinkably insidious, outrageous and something that leaves NAISG in utter abject horror.”
An NYU spokesperson did not respond to a question about Vaioleti’s concerns.
Eve Tuck, an Indigenous studies scholar from the University of Toronto’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, will be the founding director of the center, as well as a professor at both the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development and the Gallatin School of Individualized Study starting this January.
“I believe that universities have responsibilities, and I see the creation of this center as one of the ways NYU can honor its responsibilities,” Dopico wrote to WSN. “I hope and expect that this new provostial center will build upon NYU’s strengths, including its diversity and global presence; engage Native and Indigenous communities in conducting collaborative research; and uplift Native American and Indigenous scholars and scholarship.”
Contact Adrianna Nehme and Mariapaula Gonzalez at [email protected].
