AAA and the Minority Affairs Committee are pleased to announce the selection of Audra Simpson as the recipient of the 2002-03 AAA Minority Dissertation Fellowship. Ms. Simpson is a doctoral candidate at McGill University. A member of the Mohawk nation, she received a BA in Anthropology from Concordia University in 1993 and received her MA in Anthropology from McGill in 1996. Ms. Simpson conducted the cross-border ethnographic component of her dissertation research was supported by the Fulbright Foundation while she was a Visiting Scholar at New York University's Department of Anthropology. She holds Mohawk, United States and Canadian citizenship.
Ms. Simpson's dissertation, To the Reserve and Back Again: Kahnawake Mohawk Narratives of Self, Home and Nation, examines the ways in which residence, location, movement and political discourse distill into a mobile and collective 'identity' for Mohawks of Kahnawake and other Iroquois peoples across the borders on their reserves ant the states that surround them. She states that her research was "motivated in part by the disjuncture between the literature on nationhood and identity and that which I have observed (and lived) among the Mohawks of Kahnawake."
The primary concern of the dissertation is to explore the ways in which the people of Kahnawake produce nationhood and national belonging. Ms. Simpson states that the study is guided by the following questions: a) how does membership relate to the process of claiming and maintaining rights within a political community? b) how to Mohawk definitions of membership react to, echo, and compete with and take their distance from the definitions of "registered" Indian status imposed by the Indian Act? c) do conceptions and practices of being Mohawk vary across the diaspora, from those living 'on reserve' and in Canada to those living in remote urban centers in the United States? d) what is the relationship of being Mohawk to the (reduced) traditional territory of the 'reserve'? e) how to expatriate Mohawks participate in, and how are the affected or threatened by, reserve community definitions and attendant rights to territory and resources? f) what do non-Kahnawake Mohawks and other Iroquois think of all of this?
The study is comprised of three phases of inquiry: a) a genealogy of membership of 'citizenship' to the people of Kahnawake. This is a multi-generational oral history of "the problem" of membership in a community. The history will be gleaned through intensive, semi-structured interviews. b) the significance of residence and place to contemporary Kahnawake identity. This will be generated through a comparison of information form respondents residing in Brooklyn, Kahnawake, Montreal and Kanatiohareke. c) the perception of Kahnawake and notions of nationhood by non-Kahnawake Mohawks with the larger matrix of the Iroquois Confederacy.
Ms. Simpson hopes that her work will make several contributions o anthropology, to the Iroquois and to students of citizenship and nationalism in political theory. She notes that the study departs from much of the traditional literature in its ethnographic investigation and its methodological commitment to extent its range beyond the boundaries of the reserve. In addition, this is the first cross-border study of Kahnawake since 1972 and is the first to operationalize the framework of nationhood, rather than assimilation, as it context for analysis.
Ms. Simpson will be recognized at the AAA Annual Meetings during the awards ceremony on Saturday night as well as at the annual reception sponsored by the MAC, ABA, ALLA and the Native American Interest section. Michelle Moran-Taylor and Mae Lee also received the "honorable mention" designations from the Minority Affairs Committee. They will also be recognized at the reception.
Information on the current application process
About AAA / Join AAA / Jobs
& Careers / AAA Meetings
/ AAA Publications
Sections & Interest Groups / Staff
Directory / Anthro Links / Support
AAA
Questions
or comments? We want to hear from you!
Contact us / AAA
Privacy Policy
Copyright
© 1996-2006, American Anthropological Association
2200 Wilson Blvd, Suite 600, Arlington, VA 22201; phone 703/528-1902;
fax 703/528-3546