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American Indian Studies Contact Info

Eric Buffalohead, Dept. Chair
612-330-1661
buffaloe@augsburg.edu

AMERICAN INDIAN STUDIES

Exploring the images of Native American women in film

M. Elise Marubbio, assistant professor of American Indian studies, spent hours in film archives in New York, Washington, and Los Angeles, studying how Native American women were portrayed in Hollywood films. In her recently-published book, Killing the Indian Maiden: Images of Native American Women in Film, she analyzes the image that intrigued her the most—that of the young Native woman who falls in love or is connected with a white hero and dies for this choice.

Marubbio teaches Native American Women and Film, a course in American Indian Studies, Augsburg’s newest department. While Augsburg has previously had a major and minor in American Indian studies, the creation of a department strengthens the College’s commitment to creating a diverse community.

Department chair Erik Buffalohead says that an AIS major or minor is valuable for students preparing to work in a variety of human services—in business, health care, education, youth and family ministry, etc. “It’s all about cultural understanding.” Students can also study the Ojibwe language.

American Indian Studies is made up of Native and non-Native students, who often take several courses with the same professor. The department works closely with Augsburg’s American Indian Student Services program.

“In the Great American Indian novel, when it is finally written, all of the white people will be Indians and all of the Indians will be ghosts.” –Sherman Alexie, “How to Write the Great American Indian Novel.”

“Even through you and I are in different boats, you in your boat and we our canoe, we share the same river of life. What befalls me befalls you. And downstream, downstream in this river of life, our children will pay for our selfishness, for our greed, and for our lack of vision.”--Oren Lyons

What comes to mind when we see Indian people in traditional dress or pictures like the ones above? All too often it is a stereotypical assumption about ceremony, spirituality, and tribal culture. What the two quotes and the photographs present are the disconnects between what most people think of when they visualize American Indians and how American Indians think of themselves. And as Oren Lyons makes clear, the resulting gulf affects us all.

As with Alexie’s “ghosts,” American Indians are elided out of contemporary focus because popular cultural representations of them are so firmly entrenched in American culture.

American Indian Studies responds to these disconnects and the appropriation of Indianness, the telling of tribal histories, cultures, and worldviews from non-Native perspectives. American Indian Studies provides the Native voice in response to centuries of miscommunication, disinformation, and historical erasure.

Here in Minnesota and the Twin Cities we are constantly interacting with each other in our neighborhoods and in business, government, healthcare, and education. We need to understand each other’s stories.