Shirley Hill Witt

Last updated
Shirley Hill Witt
Born (1934-04-17) April 17, 1934 (age 89)
NationalityAmerican
Alma mater
Occupations
  • Anthropologist
  • author
  • activist

Shirley Hill Witt (born April 17, 1934) [1] is an anthropologist, educator, author, civil rights activist, and former foreign service officer. A member of the Akwesasne Mohawk Nation, Wolf Clan, Witt was one of the first Native American women to earn a Ph.D. [1] She obtained her Ph.D. in evolutionary anthropology from the University of New Mexico in 1969. [2] Witt has published extensively on Native Americans in addition to being a poet and fiction writer. She was a founding member of the National Indian Youth Council and worked with them from 1961 to 1964. She also served on the United States Commission on Civil Rights. [1]

Contents

Education

Witt received her B.A. from the University of Michigan in 1965 and her M.A. from the University of Michigan in 1966. She later obtained her Ph.D. in evolutionary anthropology from the University of New Mexico in 1969 with her dissertation "Migration into the San Juan Indian Pueblo, 1726-1968". [2]

Career

Witt has taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1970–1972) and Colorado College (1972–1974). She was the director of the Rocky Mountain Regional Office of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (1975–1983). Witt also served as the Cabinet Secretary for Natural Resources under New Mexico Governor Toney Anaya (1983–1985). [3]

In 1985, Witt joined the U.S. diplomatic corps. As an employee of the U.S. Information Agency, she worked in South America (Venezuela and Paraguay) and Africa (Somalia and Zambia). She held positions of Foreign Service Officer, Cultural Affairs Officer, Binational Center Director, and Deputy Director of U.S.I.A. [1]

In 2000, Witt was one of the plaintiffs in a sex-discrimination case against the United States Information Agency. The 1,100 women accused the agency of "manipulating the hiring process to exclude women, in some cases resorting to fraud, altering test scores and destroying personnel and test files." Witt reported waiting four years between being "led to believe that I did very well" on the hiring test in 1981 and being hired in 1985. Although the agency did not admit to any wrongdoing, each woman was awarded at least $460,000. [4]

Activism

Witt was active in the Indian rights movement during the 1960s. In 1961, she co-founded the National Indian Youth Council and served as its first vice president. Soon after, she joined protestors in the Puget Sound region in the fight to secure fishing rights guaranteed by treaty. Later that decade, she partnered with Council co-founder Herbert Blatchford to revitalize the Gallup Indian Center in New Mexico, where she was completing her PhD. [5]

Published works

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ella Cara Deloria</span> Yankton Dakota Author

Ella Cara Deloria, also called Aŋpétu Wašté Wiŋ, was a Yankton Dakota (Sioux) educator, anthropologist, ethnographer, linguist, and novelist. She recorded Native American oral history and contributed to the study of Native American languages. According to Cotera (2008), Deloria was "a pre-eminent expert on Dakota/Lakota/Nakota cultural religious, and linguistic practices." In the 1940s, Deloria wrote a novel titled Waterlily, which was published in 1988, and republished in 2009.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Annie Dodge Wauneka</span> Navajo Nation activist {1910–1997)

Annie Dodge Wauneka was an influential member of the Navajo Nation as member of the Navajo Nation Council. As a member and three term head of the council's Health and Welfare Committee, she worked to improve the health and education of the Navajo. Wauneka is widely known for her countless efforts to improve health on the Navajo Nation, focusing mostly on the eradication of tuberculosis within her nation. She also authored a dictionary, in which translated English medical terms into the Navajo language. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963 by Lyndon B. Johnson as well as the Indian Council Fire Achievement Award and the Navajo Medal of Honor. She also received an honorary doctorate in Humanities from the University of New Mexico. In 2000, Wauneka was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Katherine Siva Saubel</span> Native American leader and scholar

Katherine Siva Saubel was a Native American scholar, educator, tribal leader, author, and activist committed to preserving her Cahuilla history, culture and language. Her efforts focused on preserving the language of the Cahuilla. Saubel is acknowledged nationally and internationally as one of California's most respected Native American leaders. She received an honorary PhD in philosophy from La Sierra University, Riverside, California, and was awarded the Chancellor's Medal, the highest honor bestowed by the University of California at the University of California, Riverside.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gladys Tantaquidgeon</span>

Gladys Iola Tantaquidgeon was a Mohegan medicine woman, anthropologist, author, tribal council member, and elder based in Connecticut.

Clyde Merton Warrior (1939–1968) was a Native American activist and leader, orator and one of the founders of the National Indian Youth Council. He participated in the March on Washington and the War on Poverty in the 1960s and was a charismatic speaker on Indian self-determination.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mona Polacca</span>

Mona Polacca is a Native American spiritual elder from Arizona. She has worked to further social justice for indigenous people from an early age. She is an author in the field of social sciences, has held posts of responsibility as Treasurer for her tribe, served on several committees for Indigenous Peoples within the United Nations. and is widely known for her "leadership in the Native American revitalisation movement."

Frances Jane Hassler Hill was an American anthropologist and linguist who worked extensively with Native American languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family and anthropological linguistics of North American communities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ruth Underhill</span> American anthropologist

Ruth Murray Underhill was an American anthropologist. She was born in Ossining-on-the-Hudson, New York, and attended Vassar College, graduating in 1905 with a degree in Language and Literature. In 1907, she graduated from the London School of Economics and began travelling throughout Europe. During World War I, she worked for an Italian orphanage run by the Red Cross.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sophie Bledsoe Aberle</span> American anthropologist, physician and nutritionist

Sophie Bledsoe Aberle was an American anthropologist, physician and nutritionist known for her work with Pueblo people. She was one of two women first appointed to the National Science Board.

Beatrice Medicine was a scholar, anthropologist, and educator known for her work in the fields of Indigenous languages, cultures, and history. Medicine spent much of her life researching, teaching, and serving Native communities, primarily in the fields of bilingual education, addiction and recovery, mental health, tribal identity, and women's, children's, and LGBT community issues.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frederica de Laguna</span> American ethnologist, anthropologist, and archaeologist

Frederica ("Freddy") Annis Lopez de Leo de Laguna was an American ethnologist, anthropologist, and archaeologist influential for her work on Paleoindian and Alaska Native art and archaeology in the American northwest and Alaska.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tonita Peña</span> Native American painter and muralist

Tonita Peña born as Quah Ah but also used the name Tonita Vigil Peña and María Antonia Tonita Peña. Peña was a renowned Pueblo artist, specializing in pen and ink on paper embellished with watercolor. She was a well-known and influential Native American artist and art teacher of the early 1920s and 1930s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marjorie F. Lambert</span> American anthropologist and archaeologist

Marjorie Ferguson Lambert (1908–2006) was an American anthropologist and archaeologist, who primarily studied Native American and Hispanic cultures in the American Southwest. Her most known archeological excavation was the dig at Paa-ko located on the Galisteo Basin. She was a curator of the Museum of New Mexico from 1937 to 1969 and published numerous papers regarding the cultures of the Puebloan peoples. Her work was acknowledged for its technical detail and cultural sensitivity by the Society for American Archaeology and the New Mexico Office of Cultural Affairs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marie C. Cox</span> Native American activist (1920-2005)

Marie C. Cox (1920-2005) was a Comanche activist who worked on legislation for Native American children. She received many accolades for her efforts including the 1974 Indian Leadership Award from the Bureau of Indian Affairs and state recognition that same year as the Outstanding Citizen of Oklahoma from Governor David Hall. She was named as an Outstanding Indian Woman of 1977 by the North American Indian Women's Association, and served on the National Advisory Council on Indian Education from 1983 to 1990. In 1993, she was inducted into the Oklahoma Women's Hall of Fame for her work with foster children and the founding of the North American Indian Women's Association.

Patricia Zavella is an anthropologist and professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz in the Latin American and Latino Studies department. She has spent a career advancing Latina and Chicana feminism through her scholarship, teaching, and activism. She was president of the Association of Latina and Latino Anthropologists and has served on the executive board of the American Anthropological Association. In 2016, Zavella received the American Anthropological Association's award from the Committee on Gender Equity in Anthropology to recognize her career studying gender discrimination. The awards committee said Zavella’s career accomplishments advancing the status of women, and especially Latina and Chicana women have been exceptional. She has made critical contributions to understanding how gender, race, nation, and class intersect in specific contexts through her scholarship, teaching, advocacy, and mentorship. Zavella’s research focuses on migration, gender and health in Latina/o communities, Latino families in transition, feminist studies, and ethnographic research methods. She has worked on many collaborative projects, including an ongoing partnership with Xóchitl Castañeda where she wrote four articles some were in English and others in Spanish. The Society for the Anthropology of North America awarded Zavella the Distinguished Career Achievement in the Critical Study of North America Award in the year 2010. She has published many books including, most recently, "I'm Neither Here Nor There, Mexicans"Quotidian Struggles with Migration and Poverty, which focuses on working class Mexican Americans struggle for agency and identity in Santa Cruz County.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Helen Peterson</span> American Native American rights administrator

Helen Peterson was a Cheyenne-Lakota activist and lobbyist. She was the first director of the Denver Commission on Human Relations. She was the second Native American woman to become director of the National Congress of American Indians at a time when the government wanted to discharge their treaty obligations to the tribes by eliminating their tribal governments through the Indian termination policy and forcing the tribe members to assimilate into the mainstream culture. She authored a resolution on Native American education, which was ratified at the second Inter-American Indian Conference, held in Cuzco, Peru. In 1986, Peterson was inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame and the following year, her papers were donated to the Smithsonian's National Anthropological Archives and they are now held at the National Museum of the American Indian.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marie Smallface Marule</span> Canadian academic administrator, activist, and educator

Marie Smallface Marule was a Canadian academic administrator, activist, and educator. She served as executive director of the National Indian Brotherhood (NIB), chief administrator of the World Council of Indigenous Peoples (WCIP), and secretary of the Indian Association of Alberta. Marule was president of Red Crow Community College for two decades, and led the creation of several indigenous studies programs. She was previously an assistant professor of Native American studies at the University of Lethbridge.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cynthia Orozco</span> Historian

Cynthia Ann Orozco is a professor of history and humanities at Eastern New Mexico University known for her work establishing the field of Chicana studies.

Henrietta Mann is a Native American academic and activist. She was one of the designers of the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Montana and Haskell Indian Nations University's Native American studies programs. In 2000 she became the first American Indian to hold the endowed chair of Native American studies at Montana State University and was honored with the Montana Governor's Humanities Award. She retired in 2004 and became a special advisor to the president of Montana State University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mary Lindsay Elmendorf</span> American applied anthropologist (1917-2017)

Mary Lindsay Elmendorf (1917-2017) was an American applied anthropologist, recognized mainly for her work with the Mayan women of Mexico and her application of anthropology in consultation with technology. Her early work involved rural south and the slums of Boston and New Haven as well as in the Putney School in Vermont and Mexico. Her application of anthropology focused mainly on involving women with planning and implementation of suitable technologies for those women and others to choose and manage their development strategies.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "Witt, Shirley Hill, 1934-". Social Networks and Archival Context. Retrieved October 18, 2019.
  2. 1 2 "Shirley Hill Witt". The University of New Mexico. Retrieved September 27, 2019.
  3. Clark, Anthony Tyeeme; Yetman, Norman R. ""To Feel the Drumming Earth Come Upward": Indigenizing the American Studies Discipline, Field, Movement". American Studies. 46: 7–21 via JSTOR.
  4. Kilborn, Peter T. (March 24, 2000). "For Women in Bias Case, the Wounds Remain: At the heart of a long legal battle: not just jobs, but self-esteem". The New York Times.
  5. Bataille, Gretchen (2001). Native American Women: a Biographical Dictionary (2nd ed.). London: Routledge. ISBN   9780203801048.