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Abstract: Education has played a central role in identity confusion, and to this day, it is used to assimilate American Indians. For those American Indians who persist through doctoral degrees and enter academe, resisting assimilation is especially risky and often tiresome. In this conceptual exploration of identity, Cultural Contracts theory serves to illuminate the path of the American Indian academic journey. Although never applied in an American Indian context, cultural contracts theory may provide a bridge between the seemingly disparate strains of identity research and leave us with a sense of scope and potential for the theory's application.
Key Words: Cultural Contract, American Indian Identity, Negotiations in Academia
"At the close of the twentieth century, when colonial empires are almost a chapter of the past in the history of humankind, academic colonialism is still alive and well. - Mignolo, 1994,309.
Contemporary American Indians carry the historical trauma of the U.S. government's Vanishing Policies in which either through assimilation, relocation, or termination Indians were meant to be absorbed in one way or another. "No Indian cultural contribution was expected or desired. The Indian alone was to be melted and was to come out white, in culture if not in color" (Hertzberg, 1971, 22). The Vanishing Policy decades created political and cultural schisms that led to a confusion of identities in Indian Country (Morris, 2003). Education has played a central role in identity confusion, and to this day, education is used as the main tool for assimilation of American Indians and Alaskan Natives (AIAN). Harrington and Hunt (2010) suggested that given the rarity of achieving educational goals while maintaining cultural identity in a setting "dominated by powerful and persuasive influences of the white majority culture" more academic attention should be focused on achievers (p. 1). The 0.05% of American Indians who persist through doctoral degrees can certainly qualify as AIAN achievers. Resisting assimilation is especially risky and often tiresome for those who pursue this path. They not only deal with the multitude of stresses and hurdles faced by any academic, but they also deal with the cultural loneliness that comes from being cut off from the collective source of strength: the Indian community. In an essay describing her academic journey to the Ph.D., Lowery describes the...