Where Real Indians Trade

Introductory Bio

Resa Crane Bizzaro is a member and Co-Chair of the CCCC Native American Caucus, and her research focuses on Native American identity. Bizzaro studies the rhetorics of unenrolled Native Americans in this country, focusing on exclusions determined by both U.S. and tribal governments. In particular, her work comments on the loss of rhetorical power and sovereignty indigenous nations in this country face by refusing membership to those people who cannot demonstrate an appropriate blood quantum. Among a variety of research interests, Bizzaro is currently at work on a project that looks at indigenous peoples and their treatment by the established medical profession, more specifically in the field of psychiatry and psychotherapy. In 2008, Bizzaro joined the faculty at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, where she is a member of the IUP Native American Awareness Council. Bizzaro is also one of the founders of "Blankets for the Elders," a non-profit organization that collects blankets, coats, warm clothing, and heaters for distribution at Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Resa's work has appeared in College English, College Composition and Communication, and a number of edited collections.


Blog Entry

Just before we entered the station in central New Mexico, an old building appeared on my left. I moved to the train’s window to get a better look—block walls crumbling, iron bars rusting over empty windows, and letters fading but still decipherable:

Trading Station
Where REAL INDIANS Trade

Once white with red letters, the walls had collapsed on either side, making many of the letters near the margins illegible. I sat stunned at the scene outside my window. Too late, I reached for my camera, but the train slid past leaving the small station empty. I vowed to be ready on the return trip that afternoon.

As I think back on that experience, I am reminded of my own "real Indian" heritage. Although many people mistake me for a descendant of European immigrants, I am a real Indian (Cherokee and Meherrin, to be exact), and it’s unsettling to see reminders in New Mexico of the hardships and accommodations made by my family in Georgia and North Carolina. When I was about ten, I found out that my paternal great grandmother was Cherokee. What I didn’t find out until nearly thirty-five years later—while looking through the Dawes Roll—was that my paternal grandmother (the daughter-in-law) was Cherokee, as well. When I was in college, I was told by a researcher that my mother’s family was most likely Meherrin, a small indigenous nation that had initially been thought to have “washed out” into the dominant population of eastern North Carolina.

Over the years, this knowledge has explained many things to me about my life, and it has brought me closer to those who are more like me. Most often, I feel more comfortable with indigenous peoples, who tend to share the same values I was taught growing up. While my parents may have been ashamed of their ancestry, and made every effort to “pass” as part of the dominant culture, I am not. I claim my heritage because it is my birthright. I feel obligated to speak out for those who are unenrolled but feel tied to these communities whose ways we have learned, albeit unwittingly.

My commitment to my culture and my overt practice of its ways have influenced how I approach life, teaching, and interactions in my communities. I do not separate these areas, for one thing, and I find that my life is like a spiral which incorporates and accommodates all these areas. I share this notion not only with indigenous peoples but also with Rebecca Dingo, who discusses ways in which we are all interconnected.

Alma Villanueva says “diversity is a way of seeing and being in the world,” and it seems to me that I have followed such a path my entire life. My grandparents and parents impressed upon me that I should respect all people, since I can’t always understand what prompts their ways. I was also taught that there is more than one “correct” way to achieve the same end—a lesson that I try to impart to my students, particularly in our use of language.

In the classroom, I make an effort to talk about language use and its consequences. Although I see it as my responsibility to discuss Standard Written English (SWE), I support the use of World Englishes. I have recently signed my name to a call for perceiving English from a world perspective—with multiple appearances, uses, and functions and variable meanings. Since I teach in a program that includes many international students, I see the necessity of such an approach. If English is to colonize the world—as it inevitably will, as it becomes the lingua franca among nations—then we must be amenable to the changes that will inevitably appear in its usage. These changes will occur even if we restrict our use of English to native speakers.

But the consequences of non-standard usage are played out at many levels. In teaching at several universities, I have seen placement “tests” which marginalize speakers of non-standard forms or those whose first language is not English. Typically, at places I have taught, students who use non-standard dialects are placed into low-level, non-credit courses in which they must demonstrate their abilities to use edited American English prior to their release into mainstream writing classes. These students’ struggles remind me of my own experiences in high school, where a teacher predicted that I would “flunk out ... [of college] before the end of the first semester” due to my “poor language abilities.”

In reading other blog entries here, I find that I agree with Malea Powell (and others) who maintain that they do not “add” diversity to their classrooms. Honoring all cultures and communication approaches is something I strive to achieve in my classroom, no matter the student or text. I do, however, feel the necessity of pointing out what values the dominant culture places upon written communication—being careful to design assignments that accommodate personal, regional, and cultural dialects, alongside standard written English (SWE). The use of SWE is an area in which my students demand instruction, as they have seen the direct consequences of an inability to communicate using the language of the dominant culture.

My research adds to my understanding of the importance of an ability to use and understand this language. Like Victor Villanueva, I believe there are serious aesthetic, social, political, and rhetorical consequences for others when the language of the dominant culture marginalizes groups of citizens. My research demonstrates the effects of the historical and contemporary language that denies acknowledgement of unenrolled indigenous peoples in their respective nations. Not only does this lack of acceptance affect those who are unenrolled, it also affects indigenous nations whose rhetorical power would swell as their numbers increase if we are all counted.

While I could go on about how my research is impacted by language and issues of “diversity,” I think it’s more important to return to where my insights and actions have been most useful (to my way of thinking) and most directly beneficial. Based on research into language used to describe indigenous peoples, I began looking at living conditions on reservated lands—sovereign ground belonging to indigenous nations such as the pueblo where Kewa Station is located.

During a conversation with my Lakota-Cheyenne friend, Marji, in 2003, I discovered that Native Americans in South Dakota endured severe winter conditions with little protection; however, one blanket might keep a person from freezing to death. Together we established Blankets for the Elders, a non-profit group which collects blankets to ship to a distribution point in Pine Ridge. Although Blankets for the Elders has now fallen under the umbrella of a larger non-profit organization, our group's efforts have continued, despite my move to Pennsylvania in 2008. Currently, we're considering opening "Blankets North," so I can manage donations of warm clothing for children. I feel called to this work because of my interests in diversity and the need for my life to reflect that interest in helping people move out of poverty.

Three hours later, we approached the Kewa Station again. I had my camera in my hand, prepared to press the on button, when I heard the conductor over the loudspeaker: “Kewa Station; please gather your belongings and move to the lower levels of the train cars. And as a reminder, you are now on indigenous lands. You are not permitted to take pictures while the train passes through this area.” I was confused; no one earlier had announced our location or the prohibition on photography. Some people cared; some people didn't. But I understood that I could not capture a picture of a relic of what must surely be the long-gone past.

How Writing Centers Create Mini-Successes for Language Diversity and Latin@ Students

Introductory Bio

Paula Gillespie is an associate professor of English and the director for of the Center of Excellence in Writing at Florida International University since July, 2009. Prior to that she was a faculty member and directed the writing center at Marquette University. While there, she served on a subcommittee of the Diversity Task Force: “Attracting and Retaining a Diverse Faculty.” She has served as the secretary and then president of the International Writing Centers Association and has served on the Executive Committee of the Conference on College Composition and Communication. With Neal Lerner, she is the co-author of The Longman Guide to Peer Tutoring, now in its second edition. She is the co-editor of Writing Center Research: Extending the Conversation, which won the IWCA prize for outstanding scholarship. She and Brad Hughes designed the IWCA Summer Institute, which she has co-chaired three times. She and colleagues from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and University of Maine have been conducting a study on the short- and long-term effects of peer tutoring on tutors. She has consulted and/or led workshops on writing centers, writing, and peer tutoring in Germany, Greece, and Mexico.



Blog Entry

One year and one month ago I made a move that was as much a seismic shift as a transplantation. After 29 very happy years at Marquette University, a private Jesuit school set in downtown Milwaukee, I took a job as director of the Center for Excellence in Writing at Florida International University, a public university often ranked the most diverse in the country.

Our FIU students come in every skin color imaginable. Of its 40,455 students in fall of 2009, 75% are classified as racial/ethnic minorities. Perhaps more telling is that 30% of these students come from families with an annual income of under $30,000. Many have gone to elementary and high schools in the poorest sections of Miami. Many are international, but are not middle-class, international students attending a US university, planning to return to home countries. Ours are multilingual students who might be the children of refugees, families that left their homelands under duress or who were forced to emigrate. They often bring with them the nostalgia and longing for a home they will never see again, and a sense that others have destroyed their homeland (Boym, The Future of Nostalgia, 2001).

In addition, the barriers of a new language make them feel alienated, silenced, and alone. In their homelands their parents may well have been successful professionals, but here, to assure that their children will get a good education, they take menial jobs at low pay. Many FIU students often work, not just to finance their educations, but sometimes to help support parents and/or children. At home they may speak and read fluently in Spanish or another language, but at school they struggle to find a word in English and feel ashamed when they make a mistake. Some say that in spite of their seeming fluency, they are never sure of themselves when they speak or write.

At the start of the academic year at Marquette in 2008-2009, I had no idea that I was headed for FIU. But while still at Marquette, I was fascinated by the work of a visiting Association of Marquette University Women (ASMU) Chair whose specialty is the retention of Latin@ (her term) students, Professor Alberta Gloria. Once I heard her speak briefly on her research, I felt that there was a close tie between what she asserted as the needs of Latin@ students and the needs of writers who seek the services of writing centers, both native and non-native speakers. Her work reminded me of the writings of Lisa Delpit and Gloria Ladson-Billings on the student retention of minority students. By the time she gave her open-to-the-public lecture at the end of her one-year stay, I knew I was headed for a new position in the Writing Center at FIU. By that time, Dr. Gloria's lecture and report of her year at Marquette were all the more relevant to me.


Alberta Gloria and her colleagues feel that changes must be made in American universities: that Latin@ students are blamed for their lack of success, are stereotyped, and do not so much drop out as they are pushed out of institutions. Her studies focused on students who did not have the standard advantages deemed necessary to success in college, but yet who persisted and graduated. Latin@ students, such as those at FIU, succeed by creating communities for themselves, and find mentors and role models who understand and respect their cultures. They find ways to achieve mini-successes, and these factors sustain them during dark times in college.

Immediately, when Dr. Gloria arrived at Marquette, she sought out the multi-cultural center, looked into the Latin@ student organizations, attended, helped publicize, and supported their events, involved her students in her research, and took them to conferences with her. Marquette was not a Hispanic-serving institution, as FIU is, but with and for the students, she created a metaphorical space where they could achieve mini-successes. She offered herself as mentor, role model, and cheering section.

This, to me, is the vital link between her theories and the work of writing centers. It sounded very much like the arguments Nancy Grimm has been advocating in both her written work (Good Intentions: Writing Center Work for Postmodern Times.) and conference presentations: we should be willing to go to some worthwhile lengths to make a writing center a diverse site, to focus on relationship in the center (such as Grimm's book on writing centers. Creating opportunities for Latin@s and others to encounter tutors like themselves pays big dividends

At writing centers, we educate our undergraduate and graduate consultants to talk with writers, not just to focus on the texts they bring us and hope we will fix. We engage them in conversations and in so doing help them to deepen and intensify their understanding of their subject matter. The high-order concerns we deal with often call for Bruffean kinds of conversations about the topic, the assignment, and their understanding of the goals for a written piece. But this experience in writing centers offers us rich opportunities to show writers that we are interested in Latin@ students, both in their cultures and in their traditions. When we praise elements of their writing, we actually create mini-successes for them.

At FIU, the tutors are more likely to speak Spanish – or French, or Creole - than English as a first language. Our tutors’ home countries include India, Pakistan, Jamaica, Cuba, Haiti, Honduras, Dominica, and Colombia. Some are L 1.5, having learned one dominant language at home and another at school or in the playground. FIU tutors are able to empathize with non-native speaking writers because they have been there, and they are willing to say so.

The tutors may even hold a discussion in Spanish to put the Writing Center student at ease. They may ask for a Spanish word that is eluding the writer in English, and then use a translation program to help find the right English word: “Yeah, I have trouble with prepositions, too, and when I do, this is the resource I use,” they often say to these students who seek help. In effect, our tutors serve as mentors for their writing, and as role models, someone like them who has succeeded and attained a level of expertise that helps them.

Latin@s and other international students fit in our writing center. They hang out and write there, hoping that between sessions they’ll be able to ask a quick question, or just overhear some good advice given to someone else. Some writers make our center their home away from home, a place they go to study. Most writing centers have a strong sense of community within and among staffers; our community, like many others, includes the writers.

Our tutors care deeply about one another. To them, skin color is perhaps the least important element in their relationships with one another and with writers. Still, many of them, tutors as well as writers, do not live on campus but have to return to their homes in a high-stakes city, where a lapse into academic English may be looked at as a rejection of their neighborhoods, of their home communities. Lesson: keep a keen eye on your code-switching. Many of my students have not yet used their education to buy their way out of their poorer neighborhoods. In fact, many of these students love their neighborhoods and would never leave them. But others can’t wait to leave. Some students face anti-Islamic biases; some have to struggle to protect their children from danger, and, of course, some are threatened by the renewed fervor for immigration reform.

The learning curve is steep here for me as a White professor; I don’t know and can’t discern my students’ own stratifications, but they are generous, open, committed, and caring. Like many minority communities, they care enough to help educate me. Mutual respect is the first and most significant phrase that I stress on the first day of my tutor education class, and I can see eyes widen when I urge future tutors to respect the beloved mother tongue a writer might bring in. I can see them relax into themselves when they realize that not only are they expected to respect others, but that their languages, their customs, their families are to be respected, too. They have important work to do, and they do it with excellence.