UCLA
Institute of American Cultures

Mishuana Goeman (Tonawanda Band of Seneca)

Title: Associate Professor
Department: American Indian Studies and Gender Studies
Email: goeman@gender.ucla.edu

Current Project(s):

  • Mapping Indigenous Los Angeles aims to uncover and highlight the multiple layers of indigenous Los Angeles through a storymapping project with youth, community leaders, and elders from indigenous communities throughout the city. The dissemination of our collaborative research involves developing a website that makes visible the rich Indigenous identities and histories that are often hidden within other racial formations yet deeply embedded in the history of Los Angeles. Not only are indigenous communities often obscured by the complexities of racial labels and multiple migrations, our communities are often invisible to each other. Indigenous knowledge about Los Angeles imparts significant understandings of history, place, culture and the environment– in essence rooting our knowledge of Los Angeles in the rich and multiple notions of place created by indigenous peoples. Further, our storymapping project innovates a broad-reaching set of questions. We will continue to build on our research to include more original inhabitants of Southern California and relocated American Indians, the Latin American indigenous diaspora, and Pacific Islander communities, who have made Los Angeles their home. This knowledge preserves the cultural integrity of indigenous Los Angeles and serves policy makers, city planners, and the community at-large in understanding indigenous people of LA, as people who are not just in some distant, historic past, but as contemporary people who still reside here and share the cultural and geographic landscape of the city with its inhabitants.
    Mila: https://mila.ss.ucla.edu
  • Welcome to the “Carrying Our Ancestors Home” project site. This is a collaborative project working to make information about repatriation from tribal practitioner's perspective and history publically available to researchers worldwide. Our collective is made up of tribal members, practitioners, activists, researchers and academics from many places, all with experience working with reburial, repatriation, and NAGPRA. On this site we have curated content about repatriation, as well as original video and (soon) blogging content. Please contact us with any questions or comments regarding this project. We are grateful to the UCLA American Indian Studies Center, the Fowler Museum, Institute of American Cultures, the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Scott L. Waugh, and the Association on American Indian Affairs for their support of this project.
    COAH: https://www.aisc.ucla.edu/repat/
  • The Tribal Learning Community & Educational Exchange (TLCEE) is an innovative legal and general education program housed at the UCLA School of Law. With its interdisciplinary scope, TLCEE joins Native peoples’ perspectives, knowledge, priorities, and visions for the future with the academic world at UCLA. TLCEE's primary goal is to develop relevant courses for delivery to Native community members and UCLA students interested in American Indian Studies. Collaborating with Native community members and traditional knowledge bearers, TLCEE focuses on enhancing Native governance and cultural resource protection. TLCEE also encourages Native youth and Tribal community members to enroll in college level courses and works to serve as a base for Native community members attending UCLA. ; Carrying our Ancestors Home: Practitioners stories of Process and Return Primary Contact: Wendy Teeter, Curator of Archaeology, Fowler Museum at UCLA.

Available Publications/Books:

  • Goeman, M. (2017) Indigenous interventions and feminist methods. In Anderson, C. & O'Brien, J. (eds.) Sources and Methods in Indigenous Studies (185-194). New York: Routledge.
  • Goeman, G. (2013) Mark my words: native women (re)mapping our nations. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Tagged: Education, Knowledge Production, Decolonization