James V. Fenelon

Race, Research, and Tenure Institutional Credibility and the Incorporation of African, Latino, and American Indian Faculty

Conventional wisdom suggests that colleges and universities act in objective ways that are guided, in large measure, by an unrelenting quest for the truth. This article, however, draws on the literature on the power of race to demonstrate how some universities use tenure and promotion committees, as well as other resources, to show that private universities are more susceptible to the interests of alumni and, as a result, are sometimes less interested in safeguarding the interests of faculty of color, who are involved in controversial research on racial issues. This suggests that institutions vary in their willingness or ability to facilitate incorporation among faculty of color in academia.

Indigenous Movements and Globalization: What is Different? What is the Same?

Too often indigenous movements are lumped in with [anti-]globalization, globalization protest movements, or the ‘new social movements’. While in some respects this categorization fits, in other, more important respects it does not. Indigenous peoples have been resisting globalization and globalization-like forces for centuries in the western hemisphere, and for millennia in Africa and Eurasia. While the forms of resistance have changed significantly over time, a key difference for indigenous movements is that they typically are not interested in reforming the system. Rather, they are interested in autonomy and preserving their own political–cultural space to remain different. In this sense they are often deeper challenges to neoliberalism than other movements. This paper explores and elaborates on these differences and their significance for our understanding of globalization and the reactions to it.

Indian Gaming Traditional Perspectives and Cultural Sovereignty

This article discusses Indian gaming issues from the perspectives of “traditional” Lakota and Dakota people through the lens of cultural sovereignty. The author reviews the sociopolitical background of gambling on Indian reservations, compares mainstream and Indian gaming, observes historical locations of tribal sovereignty, identifies traditional views through direct interviews, and illustrates economic development and social change issues, all considered through the lens of modernity. Findings include positive effects in each of these social realms, comparatively few and quite small negative results, and internal conflicts arising from fast-acting shifts in social location for many Indian nations and tribes.

Critique of Glenn on Settler Colonialism and Bonilla-Silva on Critical Race Analysis from Indigenous Perspectives

I critique Glenn’s article on settler colonialism and Bonilla-Silva’s article on critical race analysis from Indigenous perspectives, including racial genocide and world-systems analysis, to cover five centuries of global systemic racism during the conquest of the Americas, by Spanish and English colonizers and United States imperialism. I also propose macro-structural, comparative-historical analysis of racism including the destruction, resistance, and revitalization of Native Nations and American Indians.

From Colonialism to Denial of California Genocide to Misrepresentations: Special Issue on Indigenous Struggles in the Americas

Indigenous peoples’ complex analytical issues include historical misrepresentation, struggles over sovereignty and autonomy, and Euro-American “conquest” including invasion, genocide, culturicide, and coercive assimilation, ranging over half a millennium of invasion and colonization. Perhaps the most critically contentious of these issues is genocide. We review historical construction of racial formation and cultural domination, focus on California genocide of Native peoples, and present articles in this special issue as means of understanding these processes and proposing future directions for indigenous studies.

The Struggle of Indigenous Americans: A Socio-Historical View

This chapter traces out the origins of Indigenous Peoples in the Americas, their struggles to survive and resist during European and American conquest and domination over the continent, and the nature of contemporary conflicts and revitalization strategies. We will cover four thematic/historical periods, including the origins of indigenous peoples, along with definitions used as political identifies, historically and current socio-political usage; conflicts of “American Indians” in terms of nations and struggles over sovereignty; larger Indigenous struggles in Latin America with a focus on the three modern states of North America; and anti-globalization and cultural contestation conflicts over Indigeneity, autonomy and the nature of community. The work concludes analyzing indigenous peoples in the Americas, partly explaining a great diversity of cultures, experiences, histories and even names, through the contemporary conflicts at Standing Rock and over natural resources around the globe.

Encounter on the Great Plains: Scandinavian Settlers and the Dispossession of Dakota Indians, 1890–1930Encounter on the Great Plains: Scandinavian Settlers and the Dispossession of Dakota Indians, 1890–1930, by HansenKaren V.New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. 332 pp.

Austria, Germany, China, and western Europe in the nineteenth century, we see many instances of how individual lives were impinged upon by the states in which they lived and those to which they aspired. Throughout the book, we see that the state has a vested interest in controlling the movement of some groups more than others. Discriminatory mobility policies are one way in which modern states create and reproduce inequality. At the same time, however, this collection provides some insight into how mobility shapes states as well. For example, the chapter by Katrin Lehnert documents how mobility in the nineteenth century ‘‘challenged and shaped’’ the western European boundary. Finally, the chapters included help the reader appreciate the symbolic role of boundaries and constricted mobility. The Israeli wall, Leoncini notes, is as much a symbol of political action as a physical barrier. In practice, however, Leoncini shows that Palestinians are heavily affected by the presence of the wall, facing reduced opportunity for educational and economic pursuits. Beyond its effects on mobility, the wall at the border of the West Bank in Israel represents a symbol of safety on one side and of domination on the other. The proposed wall on the Mexico–U.S. border is equally symbolic, providing apparent evidence of political action more than serving any purpose. By examining mobility and immobility from multiple perspectives and contexts, this collection contributes to our understanding of migration and globalization in several ways. Its effort to engage with the public, as discussed by the editors in the introduction, is a reminder of the critical need for more public and publicly accessible research. Recent elections highlight the importance of communicating more effectively with those outside of academia. These efforts will require avoiding esoteric language, studying questions of real interest beyond academia, and including community members in our research. This collection also highlights the need for more research on the unequal motivations for mobility. The chapters presented here illustrate that research cannot examine mobility without a focus on the reasons for seeking mobility because those reasons are highly unequal by level of development and political oppression. Without appreciating and directly engaging with this inequality, discussions of unequal mobility risk appearing trivial. I hope that this book will spur more inclusive discussion of mobility and immobility that incorporates an appreciation of public concerns and the drastically unequal opportunities enjoyed by various groups.