University of California-Riverside doctoral student Kohanya Ranch, with the guidance of Dr. Anne Sutherland, will undertake research on how revitalization movements affect American Indian political and social influence. The overarching research questions are: How do indigenous, legal, political, and scientific perspectives differ, how are those differences negotiated, what are the outcomes for stakeholders, and what role do revitalization movements play?
The research will be conducted in southern California where there is a large concentration of Chumash American Indian tribes. Research methodologies will include participant observation in arenas of indigenous cultural reclamation and policy negotiation; interviews with stakeholders; and analysis of archival materials including newspaper articles and legal documents. Social network analysis will complement these methods by empirically mapping informational and relational ties in indigenous policy and revitalization networks.
This research is important because it will pioneer an application of social network analysis to theorizing the outcomes of stakeholder negotiation. The results of the research will also have practical policy implications. Funding this research also supports the education of a graduate student.
This research investigated the significant emergence and growth of collective American Indian political power, networks and identity through Chumash revitalization movements in southern California. Using social network analysis, this project contributed to understanding how the local Native experience influences policy reform by discerning effective collaborations, strategies, policy designs and decolonizing approaches that balance diverse goals and representations of urban indigenous communities. Findings suggest efforts to increase collaboration, communication and participation between indigenous communities (both federally recognized and unrecognized) and city, county, state and national agencies have increased dramatically over the past five years. In part, this is due to changing state and federal laws that require or encourage indigenous consultation in policy process (California Environmental Quality Act, California Senate Bill 18, Marine Life Protection Act, Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, National Historic Preservation Act Section 106) as well as the increasing desire by institutions and agencies (most notably the California Native American Heritage Commission, National Park Service and National Marine Sanctuary) to create collaborative projects that serve to advance indigenous knowledge and opinion in arenas concerned with tourism, historic preservation and environmental conservancy. Project outcomes suggest that unrecognized Chumash groups are not necessarily disempowered by exclusionary state and federal regulations. Rather, strong alliances with institutions and agencies established in political and social networking has created participatory opportunities and positions for unrecognized indigenes to influence policy opinion, shape public discourse, and find alternative support to redress indigenous losses. However, ambiguities in legal definitions of consultation lead to significant debates regarding meaningful participation. Research shows that most effective strategies for unrecognized tribes to strengthen network alliances and public outreach is through social media and establishing ethnic non-for-profit foundations. Non-profit organizations were particularly beneficial for unrecognized communities to institute an aura of officialness and legitimacy and publicly evidence a solidified group identity. In the process of learning and enacting corporate-like strategies and behavior to maintain nonprofits, unrecognized tribes have subsequently found a potent means to produce value, organize group roles and responsibilities, increase cultural awareness, relate to business and government sectors, and develop partnerships with agencies, foundations and educational institutions. Engagement in these spaces has also enabled unrecognized communities to draw support and alliances, gain credibility and recognition outside of government evaluation, raise funds in the name of environmentalism, education and heritage preservation, and ultimately gain access to resources. This research also mapped the politicized arenas and relationships that shape local standards of determining indigenousness and rights-entitlement. Hindering collective strength in this social/political movement are the considerable identity-based debates that exist amongst unrecognized tribes regarding legitimate ethnic representation. Debates stem from how legal, social and anthropological standards of indigenous are invoked, judged and accepted externally. Ethnicity standards are inconsistent amongst various agencies and communities (from documentation, blood and genealogy to self-ascription) resulting in prevalent power struggles and controversies over the ownership, control and interpretation of history and culture as it is used in rights-based claims, for profit or for recognition. Matters of indigenous authenticity and motives have also increasingly come under academic scrutiny and public skepticism. Anthropologists play a central role in these controversies as they are endowed authoritative positioning as legal witnesses, historical analysts and ethnic authenticators in indigenous affairs. For Chumash communities working toward the federal recognition, anthropologists more often collaborate with communities with identifiable ancestry to adhere to federal acknowledgement procedures which require documented proof of descent. Such anthropologists have also had an effect on how local and state agencies consider appropriate indigenous representation which, in turn, contributed to furthering community factions. This research evidences the primary goal of unrecognized Chumash communities is for federally acknowledgment in order to have access to resources and participate in a government-to-government relationship with the United States. However, despite establishing descent, fulfilling criteria for federal acknowledgment is perceived a futile endeavor for most unrecognized Chumash tribes. Federal policy criteria - to demonstrate through documentation a distinct community that continuously maintained their presence, language and political organization since contact - are neither reflective of their urban Indian experience nor of their unique California histories. Their histories since contact include population decline, dispersal, land loss, assimilation policies, racism and laws forbidding their cultural practice. Yet, the burden to prove an uninterrupted link to their past makes the attempt to recover indigenous knowledge all the more vital to unrecognized tribes, because ways in which indigenous history is remembered and presented can take on a legal force that sets local norms and policies. As some unrecognized communities have unsuccessfully attempted to influence change in federal recognition policies, many are alternatively seeking a government-to-government relationship through state-recognition, judicial ruling, Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act and California Senate Bill 18. Such routes are increasingly used to enable unrecognized tribes participatory and consulting privileges from which to influence policy decisions regarding heritage, preservation and environment.
