Indigenous Studies

Oregon State University’s Indigenous Studies Minor is grounded in Indigenous knowledges, methods, and histories.

The Minor:

• enhances students’ understandings of Indigenous histories and contemporary issues;
• informs their responsibilities to Indigenous knowledges;
• demonstrates the centrality of these knowledges for meeting the world’s most pressing challenges;
• builds skills for supporting Indigenous self-determination and sovereignty;
• offers engagement in the work of decolonization;
• and prepares them to work  collaboratively with Indigenous communities and peoples at local, regional, national, and international levels.

Indigenous Studies Minor Requirements

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Baccalaureate Core Course (BCC)

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Writing Intensive Course (WIC)

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A minimum of 8 elective credits must be taken at upper-division level

About Us

The Indigenous Studies Minor was officially approved in Spring 2022. The program was developed in 2020 and 2021by a team of faculty that included (in alpha order) Natchee Barnd, Susan Bernardin, Spirit Brooks, Allison Davis-White Eyes, Qwo-Li Driskill, Patricia Fifita, Blake Hausman, David Lewis, Ron Mize,  Luhui Whitebear. The minor was intentionally housed in Ethnic Studies to ensure its interdisciplinary focus on Indigeneity and the interrogations of settler colonialism, in addition to highlighting the importance of Indigenous Studies to Ethnic Studies analyses and activism, and vice versa.

The minor should also be situated in a much longer timeline/groundwork stretching back to the establishment of the Ethnic Studies Department in 1995. Many of the existing courses (or their current iterations) can be traced to a number of previous faculty and staff, including Linc Kessler (English), Kurt Peters (Ethnic Studies), Deanna Paniataaq Kingston (Anthropology), Allison Davis-White Eyes (Student Affairs), Tony Vogt (Philosophy), Kathleen Dean Moore (Philosophy), Gail Woodside (Agriculture), Samantha Chisholm Hatfield (Agriculture), Margaret Mathewson, and Jan-Michael (Looking Wolf) Reibach (Music).

The intent to draw from both local responsibilities and a broad understanding of Indigeneity included an intentional focus on Pacific Islander communities. OSU, and Oregon more generally, has a long history of Pacific Islander diaspora and presence. The inclusion began many years prior with the inclusion of significant Pacific Islander materials in the introductory level “Native American Studies” course, and was further fueled by student organizing in spring 2016 toward the creation of a stand-along course. Led by Marquina Hofschneider (Chamorro), students asked the department to create a course. The result was ES 260 Introduction to Pacific Islands Studies, a class designed by adjunct faculty Patricia Fifita (Tongan) and offered in spring 2017. Dr. Fifita was later hired as a tenure-track faculty for Ethnic Studies in 2021, as part of an Indigenous Studies cluster hire that also brought in David Lewis (Santiam, Chinook, Takelma- Grand Ronde) as a split faculty line in both Ethnic Studies and Anthropology, and Luhui Whitebear (Coastal Band Chumash) as a School of Language Culture and Society hire (with split duties in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; Ethnic Studies; and Queer Studies).

In spring 2022, graduating senior Chanti Manon (Ethnic Studies/Art) became the first student at OSU to graduate with the Indigenous Studies minor, having already completed the degree requirements by the time the minor was made official.

Indigenous Studies Faculty

Heather Arbuckle, Head Academic Advisor
Natchee Barnd, Coordinator, Ethnic Studies & Associate Professor
Susan Bernardin, SLCS Director
Spirit Brooks, Affiliated Faculty  
Qwo-Li Driskill, WGSS Graduate Studies Director, Associate Professor
Patricia Fifita, Assistant Professor
Blake Hausman, Instructor
David Lewis, Assistant Professor
Luhui Whitebear, Assistant Professor