Pratt wins Newberry Library Fellowship

Steven B. Pratt, Professor of Communication at the University of Central Oklahoma, has won a prestigious Newberry Library fellowship.  Pratt will be traveling to the library in Chicago this summer to make use of the collection and attend regularly scheduled seminars, as well as a weekly library-wide colloquium.

Pratt will be in residence at the D’Arcy McNickle Center for the History of the American Indian, which sponsors a program called “Indian Voices in the Academy.”  The program is funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Rockefeller Foundation.

Pratt’s work focuses on the nature of  what he calls “Indian-ness.”  He contends that the definition of what makes an Indian is unclear, not only because it varies from tribe to tribe but because many individuals of Indian ancestry are not culturally competent as members of their tribes.  For example, Pratt argues that most college students of Indian ancestry are not culturally competent, because they have not yet learned how to be reflective about their own behavior.  He said that he has seen college students become excited about learning public speaking skills only to return to their tribes and learn that only elders may speak on public matters; those who have opinions but are barred from speaking must find someone to speak for them.

Pratt, a member of the Osage tribe, has written that a person can be culturally competent as an Indian, as a member of a tribe, as both, or as neither.  To be culturally competent as an Indian requires that an individual have knowledge of a variety of tribes and enact behaviors that would be culturally acceptable to Indians generally.  To be culturally competent as an Osage means that the individual knows and can enact the behaviors that are specific to the Osage tribe.  An individual could be socialized as an Osage but have no knowledge of or contact with Indians generally, or an individual could have an identity as an Indian and come from an Osage family but have little or no specific knowledge of Osage behaviors.  Finally, an individual could qualify to be classified as an Indian legally but have little or no understanding of the behaviors that would need to be enacted in order to be accepted, culturally, either as an Indian or as a tribal member.

Pratt has criticized much of the research done on the attitudes and behavior of Indians as not taking into account the cultural competence of those from whom the data were gathered.  He plans to use his time at the Newberry Library to survey the literature on Indian behaviors to determine the various ways in which Indians have been portrayed by researchers.  For example, he plans to look at the various terms used to describe indigenous peoples (Indians, American Indians, Native Americans) to see what assumptions underlie each of these terms.  He also wants to explore why Indians have the highest rate of high school dropouts for any ethnic group but also have the fastest growing rate of university attendance.  He believes that there will be a cultural disparity at the root of this seeming contradiction of statistics.

Pratt expressed hope that his research would aid in eliminating the overgeneralizations he finds about Indians in college textbooks, even those in communication.  He also indicated that he wanted his research to help communication professors to make their courses culturally appropriate for their Indian students.