Circe Sturm is a professor in the Department of Anthropology,University of Texas,Austin.[1] She is also an actress,appearing mainly in films and commercials.[2][3]
Circe Dawn Sturm was born in Houston,Texas. She describes her father as being of Mississippi Choctaw descent and her mother as being Italian American.[4] In Blood Politics (2002),Sturm wrote,"I had always known that my paternal grandmother was Mississippi Choctaw on her mother's side and very distantly Cherokee on her father's side."[5] An investigation published in 2025 by Tribal Alliance Against Frauds traced her genealogy,reviewing 888 of her relatives,and found no relatives that were of Cherokee or any Native heritage.[6] Strum has not provided evidence to contradict the findings of the investigation or any proof of her claims of American Indian heritage.
Career
Sturm writes about Cherokee identity politics and race shifting.[7][8]Blood Politics presents results of her ethnographic fieldwork in the Cherokee Nation from 1995 to 1998.[9]Becoming Indian (2011) discusses the concept of race shifting in more detail.[7][10] Sturm has been interviewed on issues relating to Cherokee identity,such as the Cherokee Freedmen controversy and Elizabeth Warren's claims to Cherokee ancestry.[11][12][13]
In 2003,the American Council of Learned Societies named Strum as a ACLS Fellow for her project "Claiming redness:the racial and cultural politics of becoming Cherokee."[16] In 2011,the Southern Anthropological Society gave Circe Strum a James Mooney Award for her book Becoming Indian:The Struggle over Cherokee Identity in the Twenty-first Century.[17]
In 2024,the University of Texas at Austin awarded Sturm and Craig Campbell a 2023–2024 Research &Creative Grant for their project Mapping Indigenous Texas.[18]
Selected publications
Books
Blood Politics:Race,Culture and Identity in the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma[9]
Becoming Indian:The Struggle over Cherokee Identity in the Twenty-First Century[8]
Say,Listen:Writing as Care by the Black Indigenous 100s Collective (2024),contributor[19]
Chapters
Circe Sturm (1996). "Old Writing and New Messages: The Role of Hieroglyphic Literacy in Maya Cultural Activism". In Fischer, Edward F.; Brown, R. McKenna (eds.). Maya Cultural Activism in Guatemala,. Austin: University of Texas Press. pp.114–30. ISBN9780292767669.
↑ Kauanui, J. Kēhaulani, ed. (2018). "Circe Sturm on Cherokee identity politics and the phenomenon of racial shifting". Speaking of Indigenous Politics: Conversations with Activists, Scholars, and Tribal Leaders. foreword by Robert Warrior. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ISBN978-1-4529-5714-2. OCLC1033547171.
1 2 "Becoming Indian". School for Advanced Research. Santa Fe. Archived from the original on March 6, 2024. Retrieved July 25, 2025.
1 2 Sturm, Circe (2011). Becoming Indian: The Struggle Over Cherokee Identity in the Twenty-first Century (1sted.). Santa Fe, New Mexico: School for Advanced Research Press. ISBN978-1-934691-44-1. OCLC671541010.
1 2 Sturm, Circe (2002). Blood Politics: Race, Culture and Identity in the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN978-0-520-93608-9. OCLC52996181.
↑ Leroux, Darryl. "Bibliography". Raceshifting. Archived from the original on July 1, 2019. Retrieved March 27, 2020.
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