Who Gets to Be Native in America?

What happens when rules around Native identity — many of which were created by a US government intent on wiping out Native people altogether — inhibit Native people from creating successful, sustainable communities? In this lecture, Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz offers a brief history of Native tribal enrollment and identity, and how that history is still shaping Native America today.

Biography

Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz is an enrolled member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina. She spent seven years working in the Obama Administration on issues of homelessness and Native policy. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Master in Public Policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. She serves as an associate professor of public policy and directs the Native Policy Lab at the University of Iowa. Her lecture at UNE will be based on her first book, The Indian Card: Who Gets to Be Native in America.

Suggested Reading

Schuettpelz, Carrie Lowry. The Indian Card: Who Gets to Be Native in America. Macmillan, 2024.