The body that I inhabit taught me about diversity before I knew what the word meant. Growing up queer and mixed-race in a small, bi-cultural community in rural Oklahoma introduced me to the ways in which the body and environment that I inhabit impact the ways in which I move and interact in this world. As a white-coded Indigenous person, I have existed on a line between two worlds, a division that was drawn inside me from the very beginning. Navigating between the worlds of my Native mother and that of my white father, as well as the struggle of coming to terms with my own sexuality in an unsafe environment taught me at an early age that while I am most definitely afforded privileges due to my perceived whiteness, there are also circumstances from which I am not sheltered.
I have taught and learned in diverse learning environments with diverse student bodies. I completed my undergraduate and master’s degree, and took on my first teaching assignments, at a small liberal arts college in my hometown and tribal community, the capital city of the Cherokee Nation. In this institution, we were asked to emphasize Standard Written English above any “home languages.” Ironically, I taught just upstairs from the Cherokee language preservation program, a language that many of my students would have spoken if not for intentional, generational efforts to erase it. In many ways, this environment, one in my hometown in which, culturally, the majority of my students’ life experiences were similar to my own, and academically, SWE was all that was “needed,” insulated me from what I would encounter once I left my hometown and home school. Moving from that institution to my first full-time position at a small community college in an urban center an hour away, I quickly found that the strictly traditional, SWE-heavy training I had was not the right fit for the students with whom I was now working. I was teaching mostly students of color who were looking for skills and knowledges that fit their own professional goals and life experiences, something that restrictive SWE didn’t offer.
In this space, in which my “average” student was a 35-year old African American woman, my fair-skinned mixed body was read as white, something I had never had to consider while living in my tribal community. It was at this institution and with these students that I began translating my understandings of community and reciprocity into an academic space. For example, I served on the retention committee, where I spoke with administrators about how, as educators, we can best serve the specific needs of our students to keep them coming to class. In this committee, we developed and launched the Student Ambassador Program, for which I served as faculty mentor. I worked with students to find community resources available in the Tulsa area. Programs like food services, child care, and housing assistance helped make sure that our students were supported not only in the classroom, but also when they left the building.
Beginning my doctoral studies at Michigan State, I was again faced with a new educational environment: a PWI R1 university, an educational space larger than the entire county in which I grew up, and the cultural shift of living so far from my tribal community for the first time in my life. At MSU, I am active in the Queer Theory Playground, and I help facilitate an annual LGBTQ+ research symposium that makes space for queer voices in the academy in a space that is welcoming and excited to hear them.
Additionally, I have spent my time in Michigan involved with the local Anishinaabe community, mentoring and tutoring Indigenous youth. Through the Indigenous Youth Empowerment Program, I am able to work with an after-school program that connects K-12 Indigenous youth in the community with Indigenous tutors who help with homework and offer cultural activities to ensure that traditional practices are still a part of the western education system. Being able to connect with the Indigenous community on whose land I am a guest allows me to give back to those who are sharing their spaces with me.
In sum, I enact diversity in my life through community engagement and reciprocity, and I enact it in my classroom by not only inviting all of my students to speak, but also, through mutual respect and the sharing of knowledge. I will bring with me a commitment to building relationships that is rooted in both the traditional practices of my Indigenous community upbringing, and is strongly situated in the knowledges that have been shared with me in my various academic homes. Overall, my teaching and service illustrate a deep commitment to, and engagement with fostering strong relations within all of the communities and spaces that I inhabit, and with all of the folks with whom I inhabit it.
Catheryn Jennings 