Andrea Smith (academic) facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Andrea Smith
Andrea Smith in 2011
Born	San Francisco, California, U.S.
Alma mater	Harvard University (BA) Union Theological Seminary (MDiv) University of California, Santa Cruz (PhD) University of California Irvine School of Law
Occupation	Academic activist
Scientific career
Institutions	University of Michigan University of California, Riverside

Andrea Lee Smith is an American academic, feminist, and activist. Smith's work has primarily focused on issues of violence against women of color and their communities, specifically Native American women. Formerly an assistant professor of American Culture and Women's Studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan, she is also a co-founder of INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, the Boarding School Healing Project, and the Chicago chapter of Women of All Red Nations.

Smith is currently employed as a professor in the Department of Ethnic Studies at University of California, Riverside. In August 2023, the university announced that she would resign from the university in August 2024 to become an emerita professor, due to charges that she "made fraudulent claims to Native American identity in violation of the Faculty Code of Conduct provisions concerning academic integrity."

Since at least 1991, Smith has claimed to be Cherokee. However, she has never been enrolled in a recognized Cherokee tribe, and genealogist David Cornsilk, who has said Smith hired him twice to research her claims of heritage, found no evidence of Cherokee ancestry for Smith. The controversy over Smith's claim to be Cherokee received relatively little attention outside academic circles until 2015, when her claim was more widely publicized in more mainstream media outlets like The New York Times Magazine. A number of Native American scholars, including a group of Cherokee women in academia, have rejected Smith's self-identification as Cherokee, and The Daily Beast has dubbed Smith "the Native American Rachel Dolezal".

Early life and education

Smith was born to Helen Jean Wilkinson and Donald R. Smith in San Francisco, and grew up in Southern California. She has one sister. Although her family is descended primarily from British and Scandinavian immigrants to the US, like some white Americans, she and her sister grew up hearing stories about the possibility of a distant Native American ancestor.

Smith earned her bachelor's degree at Harvard University in Comparative Study of Religion, and her Masters of Divinity at the Union Theological Seminary in 1997. In 2002, she received her Ph.D. in History of Consciousness from UC Santa Cruz; her dissertation was on the Bible, gender, and nationalism in both the American Indian communities and among activists of the Christian Right.

Activism and professional work

Smith has long been active in anti-violence activism, serving as a crisis counselor and starting the Chicago chapter of Women of All Red Nations. Along with Nadine Naber, Smith co-founded INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence in 2000, and she plays a prominent role in its National Planning Committee. INCITE! is a national grassroots organization that engages in direct action and critical dialogue to end violence against women of color and their communities.

Smith was also a founding member of the Boarding School Healing Project (BSHP). According to its website, the BSHP "seeks to document Native boarding school abuses so that Native communities can begin healing ... and demand justice." She represented the Indigenous Women's Network and the American Indian Law Alliance at the United Nations World Conference Against Racism in 1991. In 2005, Smith, in recognition of her research and work regarding violence against women of color in the US, was among 1000 women nominated as a group for the Nobel Peace Prize by Ruth-Gaby Vermot-Mangold, a Swiss parliament member. As of March 2013, Smith serves as the U.S. Coordinator for the Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians.

Smith and her sister Justine were faculty members at the North American Institute for Indigenous Theological Studies.

Critical work

Smith's critical work centers on genocide and acts of violence against Native women. She discusses patriarchy as a tool of settler colonial violence used to subdue and eradicate Native women.

Smith criticizes Native American Studies which she argues has a tendency to dismiss patriarchy as outside the purview of analysis of Native scholarship. Most Native scholars dismiss patriarchy because they identify it as a uniquely Western manifestation forced onto Native populations through assimilation. Smith argues that despite the fact that patriarchy is not intrinsic to Native society, its fundamental importance in the domination and extermination of Native peoples and Native women in particular should not be discounted.

Awards

• California State University (Northridge) Phenomenal Woman Award (2010)

Selected publications

Smith is the author of the following books:

• Sacred Sites, Sacred Rites (1998) ISBN B0006R030E
• Native Americans and the Christian Right: The Gendered Politics of Unlikely Alliances (2008) ISBN: 978-0-8223-4163-5
• Unreconciled: From Racial Reconciliation to Racial Justice in Christian Evangelicalism, Duke University Press (2019) ISBN: 978-1-4780-0640-4

Smith edited and/or co-edited the following anthologies:

• The Color of Violence: The INCITE! Anthology (2006) ISBN: 978-0-89608-762-0
• The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex (2007) ISBN: 978-0-89608-766-8
• Theorizing Native Studies, Duke University Press (2014) ISBN: 978-0-8223-5679-0
• Native Studies Keywords, University of Arizona Press (2015) ISBN: 978-0-8165-3150-9
• Evangelical Theologies of Liberation and Justice, InterVarsity Press (2019) ISBN: 978-0-8308-5246-8
• Otherwise Worlds, Duke University Press (2020) ISBN: 978-1-4780-0838-5

See also

• Pretendian