Andrea Smith (academic)

Andrea Smith
Andrea Smith (right) in 2011
Born	San Francisco, California, U.S.
Alma mater	Harvard University Union Theological Seminary University of California, Santa Cruz University of California Irvine School of Law
Occupation	Academic activist

Andrea Lee Smith is an American academic, feminist, and activist against violence. Smith's work focuses on issues of violence against women of color and their communities, specifically Native American women. Formerly an assistant professor of American Culture and Women's Studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Smith currently serves as a professor in the Department of Ethnic Studies at University of California, Riverside.

A co-founder of INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, the Boarding School Healing Project, and the Chicago chapter of Women of All Red Nations, Smith has based her activism and her scholarship on the lives of women of color. Since at least 1991, Smith has falsely claimed to be Cherokee. She is not enrolled in any recognized Cherokee tribes, and genealogist David Cornsilk, who has said Smith hired him twice to research her claims of heritage, found no evidence of Cherokee ancestry on either occasion. This controversy received relatively little attention outside academic circles until 2015, when Smith's claims were more widely publicized and reported on, following media attention surrounding Rachel Dolezal; The Daily Beast dubbed Smith "the Native American Rachel Dolezal."^[1][2][3] Five Cherokee women scholars issued a public statement decrying Smith's Cherokee claims as false,^[4] noting that citizenship is based on community and kinship, and damaged by such abuse of integrity. Her claims have also been rejected by other Native scholars, saying her actions have damaged trust between Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars and were used to advance her professional career.^[5] Patti Jo King, interim chair of American Indian studies and director of the Center for American Indians at Bacone College and an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation, stated "instead of coming clean and showing herself to be a true advocate for Native women, she continued her deception, proving to me that she is merely masquerading for money." Cornsilk released a statement, writing that "fact speaks loud and clear that not only is Andrea Smith not enrolled, SHE IS NOT A CHEROKEE".^[6]

Early life and education[]

Smith was born to Helen Jean Wilkinson and Donald R. Smith^[7] in San Francisco, and grew up in Southern California.^[8] She has one sister.^[7] Although her family is descended primarily from British and Scandinavian immigrants to the US, like some white Americans, she and her sister grew up hearing stories about the possibility of a distant Native American ancestor.^[7]

Smith earned her bachelor's degree at Harvard University in Comparative Study of Religion, and her Masters of Divinity at the Union Theological Seminary in 1997.^[9][10] In 2002, she received her Ph.D. in History of Consciousness from UC Santa Cruz.^[11]

Activism and professional work[]

Smith has long been active in anti-violence activism, serving as a rape crisis counselor and starting the Chicago chapter of Women of All Red Nations.^[12] Along with , Smith co-founded INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence in 2000, and she plays a prominent role in its National Planning Committee.^[13][14] INCITE! is a national grassroots organization that engages in direct action and critical dialogue to end violence against women of color and their communities.^[15]

Smith was also a founding member of the Boarding School Healing Project (BSHP).^[16] According to its website, the BSHP "seeks to document Native boarding school abuses so that Native communities can begin healing ... and demand justice."^[17] Smith has worked with Amnesty International as a Bunche Fellow, coordinating the research project on sexual violence and American Indian women.^[18] She represented the Indigenous Women's Network and the American Indian Law Alliance at the United Nations World Conference Against Racism in 1991.^[8] In 2005, Smith, in recognition of her research and work regarding violence against women of color in the US, was among 1000 women nominated as a group for the Nobel Peace Prize by Ruth-Gaby Vermot-Mangold, a Swiss parliament member.^[19] As of March 2013, Smith serves as the U.S. Coordinator for the Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians.^[20]

Smith and her sister Justine were faculty members at the .^[21]

Critical work[]

Smith's critical work centers on genocide and acts of violence against Native women. She discusses patriarchy as a tool of settler colonial violence used to subdue and eradicate Native women. In her text Conquest: Sexual Violence And American Indian Genocide, Smith gives a genealogical study of state-sanctioned violence against Native women and against their reproductive health from early America to the 19th century.

Smith's work makes a critical intervention in Native American Studies which she argues has a tendency to dismiss patriarchy as outside the purview of analysis of Native scholarship. Most Native scholars dismiss patriarchy because they identify it as a uniquely Western manifestation forced onto Native populations through assimilation. Smith argues that despite the fact that patriarchy is not intrinsic to Native society, its fundamental importance in the domination and extermination of Native peoples and Native women in particular should not be discounted.^[22]

Awards[]

• Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award (2005) for Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide^[23]
• California State University (Northridge) Phenomenal Woman Award (2010)^[24]

Controversies[]

Tenure denial[]

On February 22, 2008, Smith was denied tenure from the College of Literature, Science and the Arts at the University of Michigan.^[25] This decision attracted "an unusual degree of attention from scholars, both at Ann Arbor and nationally."^[26] Some 30 faculty and students concluded "the University's tenure evaluation process discriminates against women of color and interdisciplinary professors."^[27]

Smith's lie about her Cherokee identity also played a role in the tenure dispute. Cherokee genealogist David Cornsilk stated that Smith "told [him] her employment depended on finding proof of Indian heritage." When she was denied tenure by the University of Michigan, she suggested discrimination on the basis of her "Native American descent".^[28]

Cherokee ancestry claim[]

Since at least 1991, Smith has publicly claimed to be Cherokee although she was not enrolled in any federally recognized Cherokee tribe.^[29] Cherokee Nation-United Keetoowah Band genealogist David Cornsilk claims that Smith hired him twice in the 1990s to research her genealogy and that he found no proof of Cherokee ancestry.^[2][6]

In 2007, Smith was said to admit uncertainty regarding her Cherokee descent to scholar and Richard Allen at a conference, apologizing and agreeing to set the record straight.^[2][4][30] Native lawyer Steve Russell (Cherokee Nation) publicly accused Smith of ethnic fraud in a 2008 editorial published by Indian Country Today, but it was not widely read.^[31] Smith failed to set the record straight; and her lack of documented Cherokee descent became "something of an open secret" until 2015. She continued to be identified at professional events as Cherokee or Native American, and claimed it was part of the reason for her denial of tenure at the University of Michigan (see above). Following the media attention surrounding activist Rachel Dolezal in 2015, who falsely claimed African-American identity, an anonymous Tumblr blog, Andrea Smith is not Cherokee, was published, listing a chronology of book and conference biographies of Smith that refer to her purported Cherokee ancestry.^[32]

The Daily Beast picked up the story, and it attracted national attention.^[2][33] Genealogist David Cornsilk noted in an open letter published in Indian Country Today in July 2015 that the Cherokee are a very well-documented people, and he asserts that Cherokee citizenship is based on recognition by the Cherokee people and participation in the community, not by an individual such as Smith asserting a belief in a self-derived, independent identity.^[6]

In the ensuing controversy, some supporters of Smith started a group blog entitled Against a Politics of Disposability.^[33] Incite!, the collective that Smith helped to found, told The Daily Beast, "We support Andy Smith and the self-determination of all First Nations People. Incite would rather place our collective resources into abolishing settler colonialism than in perpetuating this ideology by policing her racial and tribal identity."^[2]

However, Native American scholars and activists have largely spoken in opposition to Smith.^[6][33][34] An open letter, signed by twelve Native American women scholars, reads in part, "Asking for accountability to our communities and collectivities is not limited to Andrea Smith. Asking for transparency, self-reflexivity, and honesty about our complex histories and scholarly investments is motivated by the desire to strengthen ethical Indigenous scholarship by both Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars."^[5] They also noted the names of numerous Indigenous scholars who have made contributions in the same field as Smith, saying that they had sometimes been overlooked.^[5] They continued, "Andrea Smith has a decades-long history of self-contradictory stories of identity and affiliation testified to by numerous scholars and activists, including her admission to four separate parties that she has no claim to Cherokee ancestry at all."^[5]

Five Cherokee women scholars, including , also published an open letter, saying that Smith's claims damaged tribal integrity and kinship, and that she had tried to build her career on a false base. King said, "... since Andrea Smith has never been affiliated with any of our communities, she is a cultural outsider."^[4] King said further, "it is Smith’s deception—not her enrollment status and not her advocacy—that constitutes the central issue.'^[33]

Native American studies ethnographer David Shorter wrote, "Andrea Smith surely thinks she is Cherokee; or she did at some point. She has been asked repeatedly to either stop claiming Cherokee identity or to either authenticate her claims through a reliable kinship, through ties to a specific family, or through the Cherokee Nation’s official process for enrollment."^[35]

Smith's sister, Justine, has also claimed Cherokee ancestry and is likewise accused of ethnic fraud. She allegedly falsified a tribal card of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. Justine, who has the same parents as Andrea, also claims Ojibway heritage.^[21][34] She was announced as Native American when hired by the Saint Paul School of Theology in Oklahoma, but left after three months after being confronted about her identity when the Cherokee Nation disputed her claim.^[33]

Andrea Smith responded to the protests and accusations in July 2015 with a statement on her blog asserting that her "enrollment status does not impact [her] Cherokee identity," and that she always has been and always will be Cherokee.^[36][3]

In May 2021, an article by Sarah Viren for The New York Times Magazine detailed how Smith has continued to be published as an academic despite overwhelming evidence that she is not Cherokee as she claims.^[7]

Selected publications[]

Smith is the author of the following books:

• Sacred Sites, Sacred Rites (1998) ISBN B0006R030E
• Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide (2005) ISBN 978-0-89608-743-9
• Native Americans and the Christian Right: The Gendered Politics of Unlikely Alliances (2008) ISBN 978-0-8223-4163-5
• Unreconciled: From Racial Reconciliation to Racial Justice in Christian Evangelicalism, Duke University Press (2019) ISBN 978-1-4780-0640-4

Smith edited and/or co-edited the following anthologies:

• The Color of Violence: The INCITE! Anthology (2006) ISBN 978-0-89608-762-0
• The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex (2007) ISBN 978-0-89608-766-8
• Theorizing Native Studies, Duke University Press (2014) ISBN 978-0-8223-5679-0
• Native Studies Keywords, University of Arizona Press (2015) ISBN 978-0-8165-3150-9
• Evangelical Theologies of Liberation and Justice, InterVarsity Press (2019) ISBN 978-0-8308-5246-8
• Otherwise Worlds, Duke University Press (2020) ISBN 978-1-4780-0838-5

See also[]

• Pretendian

References[]

External links[]

• Andrea Smith's blog