Identity Politics of Difference

Michelle R. Montgomery is assistant professor in American Indian Studies and Ethnic, Gender and Labor Studies in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington, Tacoma. An American Indian (Haliwa Saponi/Eastern Band Cherokee) with more than ten years of cultural and traditional values-based stakeholders’ experience in teaching, administering, and developing educational programs, Montgomery focuses her research on action-based aims to put transformed, decolonized educational and research methods into practice through critical race theory, tribal critical race theory, indigenous cultural autonomy, indigenous identity politics, and environmental ethics connected to land-based indigenous identities.

"A fascinating account of the very complex landscape mixed-race students navigate. . . . This is a very important empirical and theoretical contribution."—Nancy López, University of New Mexico“Seeing beyond the essentialist notion of mixed-raced people as tragic racial victims, Michelle Montgomery reveals how they are complex social actors within a dynamic system of racial hierarchy predicated on whiteness. Her study of a New Mexico tribal college breaks new ground in mixed-race studies by showing how mixed-race Native students experience racial hierarchy in interactions with their Native peers. Ultimately, this book exposes the painful and fragmenting hegemonic impact of whiteness as ideology and white supremacy as a social system, both of which need to be critically examined as part of any coherent decolonization effort.”  —Ricky Allen, University of New Mexico"Montgomery provides a unique analysis of the mixed-race experience in the American Indian community. Moving beyond the politics of exclusion, Montgomery offers insight into the ways that different identities are valued and performed. Moreover, she allows the participants to describe their own racial assertions, negotiations, and redefinitions in ways that highlight the evolving contours of racial politics in the twenty-first century. This book is a central contribution to anyone serious about studying the changing nature of race in the United States."—Margaret Hunter, Mills College