Announcements
UO/Otago Indigenous Studies Exchange–Call for Applications!
Indigenous Studies Exchange (ISE) Program Scholarship
The UO-Otago Indigenous Studies Exchange (ISE) program provides unique opportunities for select students from each campus to immerse themselves in Native American and Indigenous Studies academic and cultural activities in an international context. The Office of International Affairs will offer full scholarships* to two UO students to participate in the inaugural cohort during the Fall 2019 Semester (July – November) at the University of Otago.
Native American Studies (NAS) Minors at the University of Oregon will have the opportunity to explore Indigenous sovereignty and Native studies through the lens of the University of Otago’s Te Tumu School of Maori Pacific and Indigenous Studies programs, an experience designed to help students frame their understanding of Native American and Indigenous Studies topics in the United States within a broader international Indigenous Studies perspective. Similarly, University of Otago students will have the opportunity to live with, learn from, and work alongside Native American students, Native American Studies minors, and tribal communities in and around the University of Oregon.
Scholarship Details
The UO-Otago ISE Scholarship will cover the full cost of tuition, room and board, airfare, passport and visa application fees (if applicable), and additional fees associated with required course or extra-curricular activities (if applicable).
Click here for a scholarship application packet
Application Details
To apply for the UO-Otago ISE Scholarship, submit the following materials (in word or pdf format) in one email to williamj@uoregon.edu by 5pm on Wednesday, January 2, 2019.
- Unofficial Transcript
- Letter of Recommendation from an employer, volunteer coordinator, or member of a tribal community (Your recommendation letter may be submitted separately by the recommender to: williamj@uoregon.edu).
- A Personal Statement that explains your desire to participate in the UO-Otago ISE exchange (2-3 pgs max). Your personal statement should also address the following two topics:
- Your academic goals and expectations for participation in this program.
- Examples of your community engagement and/or extra-curricular activities that are relevant for this program.
- Essay Question (1 pg max): In what ways has your NAS coursework and your experience in college prepared you to participate in the UO-Otago Indigenous Studies Exchange program
Application Deadline(s)
All application materials must be submitted to williamj@uoregon.edu no later than 5pm on Wednesday, January 2, 2018.
Contact
GEO Advisor Kristen Kalbrener (kkalbren@uoregon.edu).
CAS Scholarships for Undergraduate Students!
The College of Arts and Sciences is currently accepting online applications for the following scholarships and fellowships for 2018-2019:
Mildred Braaten Archibald Scholarship Fund in Science and Mathematics
Mary Chambers Brockelbank Endowed Assistance Fund
Norman Brown Graduate Fellowship
Hazel Leonard Buck Scholarship
College of Arts and Sciences Graduate Scholarship
College of Arts and Sciences Scholarship
Clarence and Lucille Dunbar Scholarship
Henry V. Howe Scholarship
Hildegard Kurz Foreign Language Scholarship
John L. and Naomi Luvaas Graduate Fellowship
Miller Family Graduate Award in Technology & Science
Everett D. Monte Scholarship
Risa Palm Graduate Fellowship
Charles A. Reed Graduate Fellowship
Marthe E. Smith Memorial Science Scholarship
Clayton and Sheryl Steinke General Social Sciences Scholarship
Carolyn M. Stokes Memorial Scholarship
Susan A. Winn Memorial Scholarship
Please visit http://cas.uoregon.edu/cas-scholarships/ for more information on each scholarship’s criteria, average award amounts, and a link to the online application materials. The application deadline is Monday, February 26, 2018.
If you have any questions please contact the College of Arts and Sciences by e-mail at scholarships@cas.uoregon.edu or by phone at 346-0045.
Native DuckFund is Live! Click, Contribute, and Share Today!!!
It is with great pleasure that we announce that the Native Duck Fund crowdsourcing campaign is now live!
The Native Duck Fund is a professional development fund for Native 
American students at the University of Oregon. Students have access to various financial aid programs to help cover tuition, fees, and cost of living while attending the University of Oregon, but they often encounter financial roadblocks to professional development opportunities, such as conferences, academic competitions, and other meritorious work that would significantly enhance their career goals. Because Native American poverty rates are nearly double the poverty rate of the general US population, expenses such as conference fees and travel costs for research or internship opportunities often prove prohibitive for students to overcome. This fund would support Native students seeking to develop a career in any field by assisting with the cost of supplies, equipment, and travel related expenses to attend and compete in academic competitions.
While we are already over halfway to our goal of $10,000 goal, we encourage you to click on the link, contribute, and share this announcement widely across all your networks and social media. Links to share on Facebook and Twitter are available on the website:
https://duckfunder.uoregon.edu/project/3293
Please consider making a donation to support Native American students! Nkena!
With warm regards,
Brian Klopotek and Jason Younker
Co-Directors of the Native Duck Fund
Brian Klopotek
Associate Professor, Ethnic Studies
Native American Studies minor, program director
Jason Younker
Assistant Vice President
Advisor to the President on Tribal Sovereignty and Government-to-Government Relations
Open Letter of Support to Standing Rock Protectors, Oceti Sakowin, and Sacred Stone Camp
[embeddoc url=”https://blogs.uoregon.edu/nativestudies/files/2016/10/StandingRockSupport-10foomn.pdf” download=”all” viewer=”google”]
Chinuk Wawa Language Classes @ Lane Community College and UO Native Studies Minor
Please find attached the poster for the Fall 2016 Chinuk Wawa classes at Lane Community College, in effective support of which many of you generously spoke and wrote and stood this last May. Thanks, again, UO colleagues! You helped save Chinuk Wawa at Lane!
Students who complete CW 101 and 102 or CW 201 and 202 will receive a full tuition refund for CW 103 or CW 203, respectively. This was made possible under the terms of an anonymous donation to the Lane Foundation.
In addition to satisfying language requirements for the UO Native Studies Minor, many UO students can also benefit by enrolling in the the Lane/U-O Dual Enrollment Program, which still has no application fee. The deadline for Dual Enrollment applications is three weeks before the start of classes for Fall term.
Students should also know that should they experience registration problems for the class, they’re still welcome to attend and register in person. They’ll find help with registration in the LCC Longhouse (every Monday and Wednesday from 4 – 5:50) as soon as classes start in the fall.
Rennard Strickland Lecture
Sovereign is He Who Decides on the Exception:
Tribal Jurisdiction, the Supreme Court, and Racially Constructed
Reservation Environments
Professor Robert A. Williams, Jr.,
E. Thomas Sullivan Professor of Law and Faculty Co-Chair,
Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program
at The University of Arizona College of Law
5:30 p.m., Room 110
William W. Knight Law Center
1515 Agate Street
University of Oregon
Free and open to the public
Reception immediately to follow
Robert A. Williams, Jr. is the E. Thomas Sullivan Professor of Law and Faculty Co-Chair of the University of Arizona Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program. Professor Williams received his B.A. from Loyola College (1977) and his J.D. from Harvard Law School (1980). He was named the first Oneida Indian Nation Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School (2003-2004), having previously served there as Bennet Boskey Distinguished Visiting Lecturer of Law.
The 2006 recipient of the University of Arizona Koffler Prize for Outstanding Accomplishments in Public Service, Professor Williams has received major grants and awards from the Soros Senior Justice Fellowship Program of the Open Society Institute, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the U.S. Department of Education, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the National Institute of Justice. He has represented tribal groups and members before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Peoples, the United States Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court of Canada.
Professor Williams has served as Chief Justice for the Court of Appeals, Pascua Yaqui Indian Reservation, and as Justice for the Court of Appeals and trial judge pro tem for the Tohono O’odham Nation. He was named one of 2011’s “Heroes on the Hill” by Indian Country Today for his human rights advocacy work as Lead Counsel for the Hul’qumi’num Treaty Group of Canada before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
Professor Williams is the author of The American Indian in Western Legal Thought: The Discourses of Conquest (1990), which received the Gustavus Meyers Human Rights Center Award as one of the outstanding books published in 1990 on the subject of prejudice in the United States. He has also written Linking Arms Together: American Indian Treaty Visions of Law and Peace, 1600-1800 (1997) and Like a Loaded Weapon: The Rehnquist Court, Indian Rights and the Legal History of Racism in America (2005). He is co-author of Federal Indian Law: Cases and Materials (6th ed., with David Getches, Charles Wilkinson, and Matthew Fletcher, 2011). His latest book is Savage Anxieties: The Invention of Western Civilization (Palgrave Macmillan 2012).
Sponsored by:
The Environmental & Natural Resources Law Center
The Wayne Morse Center for Law & Politics
Student Legal Advocates for Tribal Sovereignty
Native American Students Union
Open Letter to University of Oregon Athletics and Nike: Pioneer Uniforms Celebrate Violence and Alienate Oregon Tribes
October 13, 2015
An Open Letter to the University of Oregon Athletics Department and Nike:
As a coalition of Native faculty, staff, students, alumni, community members, and allies from the campus community and across the state, we write to express our disappointment in the October 10th debut of Nike’s pioneer-themed uniforms for the University of Oregon home game against Washington State.
According to Nike’s press release, the new uniforms are intended to “emphasize Oregon state history” and honor the “Maverick heritage … embodied by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark,” “trailblazers” of innovation, free-thinking and risk-taking that defines Oregon state history.[1] The westward expansion of the United States, however, was rooted not in transcendent, universal values but in White supremacy, a sense of divine obligation of free White men to take—by force if necessary—the land belonging to the non-White nations west of the Mississippi. The history of genocidal violence, ethnic cleansing, and exclusion of non-Whites that followed in Oregon is well documented. But instead of condemning this process, the celebration of Lewis and Clark valorizes it, papering over the ongoing consequences of colonization and Indigenous traditions of “exploration,” “innovation,” “free-thinking” and “risk-taking” that existed in this place long before the expedition arrived at the Pacific coast.
As UO alum and Grand Ronde tribal member David Lewis notes, the celebration of U.S. expansionism as an unmitigated historical and moral good is at odds not only with history but also with recent efforts by the University to strengthen relations to Oregon’s Nine Federally Recognized Tribes and to better support Indigenous faculty, staff, and students on campus.[2] They also undermine the considerable time and effort Nike has expended over the past few years developing the Native-inspired N7 product line. Upon public dissent from tribal peoples following Nike’s announcement, the University initiated steps in the lead-up to Saturday’s game to address these disconnects, including the addition of a helmet decal meant to represent Indigenous peoples in the Oregon and the nine sovereign tribal governments, as well as public address and television copy that explicitly acknowledged the ongoing presence of tribal peoples in the state. Such efforts, however, give the impression that the Nine Tribes endorse the pioneer theme, or that a simple acknowledgment of Native presence as an afterthought adequately addresses the more substantive issue of the public face of the flagship institution in the state celebrating the violent, at times genocidal, practices of conquest in the region.
We would like to reframe this event as a teaching moment that might productively acknowledge the monumental significance of the expedition/invasion by embracing and representing all of the communities which were and continue to be impacted by it. We thus encourage the Athletics Department and Nike to act swiftly to remove the uniforms from future use and recall all “special edition” paraphernalia from retail stores. We further suggest that the Athletics Department and Nike refrain from any future celebrations of what remains a contested history, and conduct meaningful consultation with tribes and administrative and academic officials earlier in project development in order to avoid future missteps. By openly and critically acknowledging how words, actions, thoughts, representations, and policies affect one another, we can begin to bring our communities together around shared histories of experience that draw us all into relationship.
On behalf of Native Strategic Initiatives, University of Oregon,
Kirby Brown, English (Cherokee Nation)
Brian Klopotek, Ethnic Studies (Choctaw)
Jennifer O’Neal, University of Oregon Libraries (Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde)
Melina Pastos, Office of Academic Advising (Flathead Descendant)
Leilani Sabzalian, PhD Candidate, College of Education (Alutiiq)
Angie Morrill, Alum (Klamath Tribes)
Scott Pratt, Philosophy
[1] http://www.goducks.com/ViewArticle.dbml?ATCLID=210392870
University of Oregon Future Stewards Program!!!
The Graduate School of the University of Oregon is pleased to announce the Future Stewards Program, designed in cooperation with the office of the Assistant Vice President and Advisor to the President on Sovereignty and Government to Government Relations. The program will provide an opportunity to work with the nine federally recognized tribes of Oregon to help to make graduate education more accessible for their members. It is our hope that tribal members who have earned graduate degrees at the University of Oregon will be able to return home to become stewards of their communities who will support their traditional culture, foster educational opportunities, and promote economic development.
The University of Oregon Graduate School will provide up to two years (six regular terms) of tuition support for students in masters, or doctoral programs. Doctoral students may use their waivers to support terms without teaching during the two year eligibility period.
To be eligible to receive a tuition waiver award (worth approximately $17,500), the student’s tribe will agree to pay mandatory student fees (about $600 per term) and provide health insurance and a stipend to support other costs of attendance.
In Academic Year 2015-16, waiver awards will be available only to current UO students (with the required tribal support). Beginning in Academic Year 2016-17, priority will be given to new students to the University of Oregon. Tuition support will be awarded for three terms during the regular academic year. Up to five awards will be made each academic year.
To be eligible a student must be admitted to a graduate program at the University of Oregon. To be considered, the student will need to submit a waiver award application and include both a statement of academic purpose (describing her or his interests and academic plan) and a letter of support from her or his tribe confirming tribal support (including the amounts to be provided for fees, insurance, and stipend). Transcripts and letters of recommendation provided through the admission process will also be reviewed. Review and selection will be conducted by a committee consisting of the Dean of the Graduate School, the Assistant Vice President, and one other faculty member.
In Academic Year 2015-16, applicants for support will be asked to submit their applications materials by December 1 for to request fall term tuition support. Students may apply for winter tuition support by December 1 and Spring tuition support by February 1. Students who receive an award for Academic Year 2015-16 may request up to three more terms of tuition support for Academic Year 2016-17.
Applications for Academic Year 2016-17 funding will be due on or before April 1. If funding remains after initial awards are made, a second round of applications will be considered with a September 1 deadline.
For more information contact Jason Younker, Assistant Vice President (jyounker@uoregon.edu) or Scott L. Pratt, Dean of the Graduate School (spratt@uoregon.edu).