Hopes & Gifts

I really appreciate the framing of this week’s topic. I’m a big believer in the fact that one of the most surefire ways to impactful scholarly collaboration is from-the-get-go vulnerability in the form of being open and honest about your own hopes, needs, and gifts which you’re bringing to any collaborative project. I’ve found that in academia, at least on the graduate school level, that there is a particularly heightened aversion to such vulnerability – perhaps due to a heightened sense of competition or sense of scarcity.

In relation to that, I find that vulnerability is the greatest gift that I bring to this internship. Although it can be painful, I’ve found deep fulfillment in my work, I think, due to my ability to center my personal experiences and perspectives within my scholarly writing. Being open in that way definitely takes more energy than I have at times, but it’s also led to some of the most rewarding personal and professional relationships I’ve ever had through this open articulation of who I am and want to be in my scholarship.

I felt that way during our opening sessions when we spoke about our experiences as Native students in the academy. It was a weird collection of feelings – both happy and sad – to hear about feelings that my colleagues had throughout their experiences. Feelings of isolation, being misunderstood, etc. in a way was validating to see my own experience represented, but at the same time a sadness in being reminded of how I felt in undergrad as well as imagining how that must feel for people in this current moment.

These feelings are connected to my hopes for this program – to receive a similar degree of openness from others as we work toward individual and collaborative projects. I think this sense of intimacy heightens the quality of the work we will produce as well as drawing us all together more strongly on a personal level too. I hope, too, to learn more ways in which I can bring this gift and this hope to the work that I do with various tribes – adapting my approach to specific cultural contexts while making my research even more materially impactful.

Finally, for areas of help, I would like to learn how to read more effectively in other disciplines/fields. I’m used to reading things solely from a literature/english perspective, but I’d like to learn more about the methodologies that you all engage with to increase the success of my interdisciplinary approach.