The Vanishing Scholar: Indigenous Erasure in Funding Data

Throughout its history, the United States has pursued two main objectives through its Federal Indian law and policy: the assimilation of the country’s First Peoples and the dispossession of their land. Both objectives have worked toward the ultimate goal of erasing Indigenous Peoples [Newland, 2022]. Laws and policies serving this goal have repercussions across all aspects of the lives of Indigenous Peoples, whether through influence on our representation in popular culture (or lack thereof) or on the research initiatives and funding opportunities that are accessible to us.

Such policies are clearly not a thing of the past; they continue to be part of an ongoing process of settler colonialism that is furthering the erasure of the First Peoples and first scientists of this country. Recent polling by the Native-led nonprofit organization Illuminative indicates that 78% of Americans “know little to nothing about Native Americans and a significant portion believe that Native Peoples must be a dwindling population because they do not see, hear, or read about Native Peoples.” These sentiments are not new and echo, a century later, those embodied in photographer Edward Curtis’s early 20th century “Vanishing Race” project, wherein he sought to document Native American lives and cultures, which he falsely thought would fade from existence.

The erasure of Indigenous Peoples has long led to their underrepresentation across academic fields, especially in the environmental sciences.

The erasure of Indigenous Peoples has long led to their underrepresentation across academic fields, especially in the environmental sciences. This field continues to be among the least diverse in the United States, with more than 67% of degrees awarded to white students in 2019 and only 20% awarded to Latinx, Asian, Black, Indigenous, and Pacific Islander students combined, according to U.S. Department of Education data compiled by Data USA. The geosciences exhibit similar trends in their lack of diversity.

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