“The Department of Sociology & Criminology supports the following statement from the UNCW Indigeneity Project:”

Dear University Community, 

As members of the Indigeneity Project Working Group, we would like to take a moment to speak to the devastating and harmful comments that Rick Santorum made regarding Indigenous peoples and histories. Given our mission to increase visibility to Indigenous peoples and issues, we urge UNCW faculty and staff to consider the impact of such ideas on our students, faculty, staff, community, and UNCW culture. Santorum’s denial of Native American history and culture perpetuates a settler colonial mindset that values colonization and assimilation and erases Native Americans’ lives, histories, culture, and stories. His rhetoric demonstrates – and highlights – that colonization is ongoing, contemporary, and ever present. Colonialization is now. During this time when Native American communities are disproportionately impacted by COVID-19, during this time of heightened cultural attention to racial and social justice, we urge everyone to consider how colonialization impacts our teaching, learning, and pedagogy, and how we can counter such dangerous and inaccurate narratives. Instead, we challenge all of us to acknowledge that Indigenous peoples resist, survive, and thrive despite the ubiquitous weight of ongoing settler colonialism. 

Addie Sayers (ENG),

Symphony Oxendine, Cherokee/Choctaw (EDL),

Menaka Raguparan (SOC/CRM),

Ann Rotchford (SOC/CRM)

UNCW Indigeneity Project Group

Dear criminology and sociology students,

    Unless you’ve been trapped under a rock, you have read or seen the news regarding the guilty verdicts in the trial of Derek Chauvin for killing George Floyd 11 months ago. The reactions to these verdicts are obviously varied, and have involved projections about the takeaway of this trial’s outcome for criminal justice, racial justice and racial tensions, and the fabric of community and society itself (sui generis). As students of social science, I would encourage you to think about the foundations of your liberal arts education and the classes you have taken, and are currently taking, in your major program, and apply this knowledge in your interactions and conversations with fellow students, professors, friends, family members, the checkout clerk at the store…whomever (and critique that knowledge). But I’d also ask you to observe. To listen. To engage in the kind of empiricism that you have learned in your major. And don’t just listen to those in your immediate circle; seek out others’ views, especially people of color, and listen to them. If that is not safe, or possible, given your current situation with regard to the pandemic, then I would encourage you to jump online and find ways to get involved in efforts that are based in social scientific theory and methods, a regard for justice, and/or efforts to address pernicious social problems such as crime, oppression, poverty, racism, and sexism. In the words of Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, after the verdict was delivered, “There is a role for all who dream of a justice that we haven’t yet experienced.” This is your future, and you have an important role in where we go from here.

Thanks for listening and learning,

mom

Mike Maume, Ph.D.
Professor and Chair