In fall 2022, UNC-Chapel Hill—the flagship university for the state with one of the largest populations of Native people east of the Mississippi—will eliminate its American Indian and Indigenous Studies (AIIS) major concentration and minor. Less than 20 years after the establishment of the AIIS concentration, the administration will effectively end the program through curriculum revisions to the American Studies Department, where AIIS@UNC is housed. This change will prohibit all incoming students from formally declaring a focus in AIIS.  
  
The dissolution of AIIS and its incorporation into the American Studies major and minor constitute erasure. UNC administrators made this change without consulting, nor seeking consent from Native students and other stakeholders. Through these actions, the University erodes its special relationship with and obligation to the state’s Native Nations and its Native students, faculty, and staff. In a form of twenty-first-century assimilation, these changes undermine the disciplinary integrity of AIIS by subsuming it under American Studies.  
 
The elimination of AIIS is just the latest blow to the Native UNC community. In the last two years, Larry Chavis (Lumbee), former Director of the American Indian Center at UNC, resigned his position because of chronic underfunding, and Malinda Maynor Lowery (Lumbee), history professor and former Director for the Center for the Study of the American South at UNC, left her position for Emory University because of a pattern of disinvestment in Indigenous Studies and the devaluing of faculty expertise. The decreasing number of Native faculty and faculty engaged in AIIS research is mirrored in the waning number of Native students on campus: since 2011, the number of Native students enrolled at UNC-Chapel Hill has dropped by 33%.   
 
On October 10, 2021, the Native campus community and our allies joined the University in celebrating the second Monday of October as Indigenous Peoples’ Day. In his declaration, Chancellor Guskiewicz described UNC as “home” to American Indian and Indigenous Studies, “offering majors, minors, and graduate degrees.” Native and AIIS faculty and students take the concept of “home” seriously. For many of us, the state and the region have been our home for thousands of years.   
 
Holding the Chancellor to his word, we call for the University to remain home to AIIS@UNC. We seek the immediate restoration of the concentration and a commitment to protect, preserve, and grow AIIS@UNC, with the ultimate goal of developing a standalone Department of American Indian and Indigenous Studies.

Help us save AIIS@UNC by signing your name and sharing this petition! 

And if you’re a current undergraduate at UNC and want to show your solidarity, declare a major or minor in AIIS TODAY!  

ᏩᏙ, ᏍᎩ (Wado, Sgi). Yaw^ko. Yakoke. Chi Miigwech. Pi:lahúk. 

- UNC's Native Graduate & Undergraduate Students