News

NAS at PSU Welcomes Professor Pewewardy

The Native American Studies program at Portland State University is pleased to announce the hiring of Professor Cornel Pewewardy as associate professor of Native American Studies.

Professor Pewewardy (D.Ed. 1989, Pennsylvania State University) is Comanche-Kiowa and an enrolled member of the Comanche Nation of Oklahoma. Dr. Pewewardy served as a post-doctoral fellow in the Center for Multi-Ethnic Education at the University of Oklahoma. Prior to joining Portland State University, he was an Associate Professor in the Department of Teaching and Leadership and Center for Indigenous Nations Studies at the University of Kansas as well as adjunct faculty in American Indian Studies at Haskell Indian Nations University. From 2005-2007, Dr. Pewewardy was the Dean of Academic Instruction at the Comanche Nation College in Lawton, Oklahoma. In 2007 Dr. Pewewardy taught courses in American Indian Studies at Fresno City College in Fresno, California and worked as a Tribal Administrator and consultant with local casino gaming tribes in the Central Valley of California.

A former kindergarten teacher and elementary principal on the Navajo reservation in New Mexico, Dr. Pewewardy is the founding principal of the American Indian Magnet Schools in St. Paul (MN) Public School District. For his architectural design of this award-winning, public magnet school, the National Indian Education Association selected him the 1991 National Indian Educator of the Year.

His research interests focuses on Praxis in Indigenous Studies; Indian Mascots and the Spectacle of American Sports Culture; Recording, Archiving, and Transcribing Tribal Music and Songs; Intertribal Powwows in a Contemporary Society; Critical Race Theory; Tribal Colleges and Universities; Holistic Education of Indigenous Peoples; Identity Politics and Representation in the Curriculum; and Applied Indigenous Leadership.

In his professional career Dr. Pewewardy received numerous awards in transformational leadership, teaching, research, and service. Recently, he is the recipient of the 2007 G. Mike Charleston Research Award for Outstanding Scholarship in American Indian Education from the American Educational Research Association (AERA); 2005 Distinguished Scholar Award from AERA; 2005 Anthony Daniels Award for Leadership and Achievement in Multicultural Education at KU; and five-time recipient of the Big Twelve Outstanding American Indian Faculty of the Year. Dr. Pewewardy was also selected the 2001 W.T. Kemper Fellowship for Teaching Excellence at KU. He received the 2001 Crystal Eagle Award in American Indian Studies at KU. Dr. Pewewardy is a 2006 Tribal College Leadership Development Project Fellow at the Institute for Educational Management at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He reviews for several professional refereed journals in Indigenous studies, Indian education, multicultural education, and teacher education. Professor Pewewardy has been the faculty advisor to the First Nations Student Association for seven years at KU.

Professor Pewewardy has eight professional music CD recordings on Southern Plains music and ten CDs with combined, various artists. In 1998 the Lawrence (KS) Arts Commission awarded Cornel the Phoenix Award for his lifetime contributions to music and arts. He was also named the 1997 Musician of the Year by the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers.

Recent Faculty Achievements

Professor Ken Ames continues to work on several projects in Native American archaeology. The major one is completing the National Endowment for the Humanities supported analyses of materials recovered during excavations at the Meier and Cathlapotle sites between 1987 and 1996. These are village sites in the Portland Basin dating between about 1400 and 1830. Both contain the remnants of large plankhouses and their associated deposits. The Meier site has one structure while Cathlapotle is a multihouse village. This work will continue during the summer and next year. It also involves several current and former PSU students including Cameron M. Smith, Greg Baker, William Gardner-O'Kearny and Kristen Fuld. A paper on some the results of the project appears in the current issue of the "Journal of Field Archaeology." He also been working with current MA students Sara Davis and Kristen Fuld on the history of the bow and arrow on the Columbia Plateau over the last 10,000 years. Ames continues to be active in heritage related issues in the Portland area and is working with colleagues in British Columbia on research possibilities on the northern British Columbia coast.

Professor Virginia Butler has been working on several projects linking archaeology of Native Americans with applied issues in wildlife conservation and heritage management. She (with Sarah Campbell, Western Washington Univ.) recently submitted a manuscript to Ecology and Society that highlights long-term sustainable use of animal resources by Pacific Northwest Native peoples, as seen from zooarchaeology. She and graduate student Tait Elder, are currently compiling zooarchaeological records from southeast Alaska as part of Tom Thornton's Herring Synthesis project, funded by North Pacific Research Board. For the past year, she has been working with undergraduate Wendy Ann Wright studying the City of Portland's and other U.S. municipalities' approaches to archaeological resource protection; they presented a poster at the recent Society for American Archaeology meetings in Vancouver, B.C. and are working on a manuscript. Over the summer, Butler and graduate students Danny Gilmour and Tait Elder will be analyzing and reporting on a large collection of fish remains from the Klamath Basin that will provide historical context on Native American connections with fish, many species of which are now extinct or threatened.

Professor Cynthia-Lou Coleman published two articles on media coverage of pharmaceutical advertising in the journal Health (2007, vol. 12, No. 1) with Heather Hartley, and in Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly (2006, vol. 83, No. 3) with Hartley and J. David Kennamer. Coleman's work on framing Indians in western cinema was published in American Studies (2005, vol. 46, Nos. 3-4) and Indigenous Studies Today (2005-2006), vol. 1, no. 1.

Professor Maria DePriest published "Oklahoma: A View from the Center." In Studies in American Indian Literatures (SAIL), 19 (3) (Fall 2007); "Once Upon A Time, Today: Hearing Fleur's Voice in Tracks." In Journal of Narrative Theory. Forthcoming, Summer 2008.

Professor Grace Dillon published "Scarification and Survivance in China Miéville's 'The Scar.'" In Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction 36:101 (Winter 2007): 13-25, and "Totemic Human-Animal Relationships in Recent SF." In Extrapolation 49:1 (Spring 2008): 74-100. Indigenous Scientific Literacies in Nalo Hopkinson's Ceremonial Worlds." Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, 18:1 (Spring 2008).

Professor Ann Fulton received a PSU Civic Engagement award for community-based research related to Native American Studies for her work studying the Chinuk Wawa language and how Native and non-Native people lived together in nineteenth-century Portland.

Professor Tim Garrison recently co-edited The Encyclopedia of United States Indian Policy and Law for Congressional Quarterly Press, 2009.  The University of Georgia Press will soon release a paperback version of his book, The Legal Ideology of Removal: The Southern Judiciary and the Sovereignty of Native American Nations.  He has also contributed the following articles to anthologies over the last few months: “On the Trail of Tears: Daniel Butrick’s Record of the Roundup, Internment, and Removal of the Cherokees” in Removing Peoples: Forced Removal in the Modern World (Oxford University Press, 2009); “John Ross and Indian Removal” in Milestone Documents of American Leaders (Schlager, 2009) and “Andrew Jackson’s Message to Congress on Indian Removal” in Milestone Documents in American History (Schlager 2008).  He also provided the introduction to Judge Warren K. Urbom’s article, “You Can Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee,” for The History of Nebraska Law (Ohio University Press, 2008).

Professor Nariyo Kono published "Language Orientations as a Research Tool: Implications for Native Language Revitalization Efforts." In Current Issues in Language Planning: Language Planning and Minority Languages. Professor Kono just received word that she has been awarded an additional grant from the School of Oriental and Asian Studies at the University of London in the amount of approximately $150,000 (£ 67,107) to continue her research on the Kiksht language.

Cornel Pewewardy (Comanche and Kiowa), Director and Associate Professor of Native American Studies, was named Teacher of the Year by the National Indian Education Association (NIEA). Since 1977, NIEA has honored Native leaders who have changed and improved the lives of their schoolchildren and impacted dialog concerning Native education issues, both locally and nationally. Read more about NIEA and his award here.