Membership Statement
Membership in the California Indian Studies and Scholars Association (CISSA) is a commitment to take part in the organization's collective project of realizing a decolonial vision through one's scholarship, practice, or expertise as a California Indian scholar. Scholarship is not defined as only happening in the academy and includes community scholarship of a variety of forms including creative performance, language revitalization programs, art, cultural knowledges, action research, among many others. Due to histories of epistemic, material, bodily, ontological, and other violences that founded and continue to reproduce the state of California, the U.S., and settler and imperial society, through the continued elimination of Indigenous peoples and our intellects, polities, and worlds, CISSA acknowledges that the terms found in the phrase California Indian Studies and the various positions it implies are fraught and complex. CISSA is committed to scholarship by, with, and for California Indian scholars as part of our intellectual sovereignty and our goal of decolonization.
Therefore, as a collective, our association does not express consensus on what constitutes scholarship or California Indian identity. Nonetheless, we are each committed to advancing ethically and politically grounded scholarship for our tribes and we each do so with the express affirmation of our ancestral ties to one or more California Indian communities. While acknowledging the complexity of our political histories, CISSA condemns the damage caused by ethnic identity fraud and the underlying assumption that anyone can take and possess California Indian identity for their own gain. Yet, we are concerned as well with how the category of identity, in its varied forms, can be weaponized in ways that reinforce settler forms of recognition, especially against other Indigenous people. Due to our association’s commitment to and accountability for decolonial knowledge, it is especially important that our members do not reproduce such damaging conditions. Membership in CISSA is, therefore, a commitment to combat these conditions through our scholarly practices and our modes of relating.
Therefore, as a collective, our association does not express consensus on what constitutes scholarship or California Indian identity. Nonetheless, we are each committed to advancing ethically and politically grounded scholarship for our tribes and we each do so with the express affirmation of our ancestral ties to one or more California Indian communities. While acknowledging the complexity of our political histories, CISSA condemns the damage caused by ethnic identity fraud and the underlying assumption that anyone can take and possess California Indian identity for their own gain. Yet, we are concerned as well with how the category of identity, in its varied forms, can be weaponized in ways that reinforce settler forms of recognition, especially against other Indigenous people. Due to our association’s commitment to and accountability for decolonial knowledge, it is especially important that our members do not reproduce such damaging conditions. Membership in CISSA is, therefore, a commitment to combat these conditions through our scholarly practices and our modes of relating.
