Interview with Andrea Smith

Abstract

Andrea Smith is an activist/educator who was born in San Francisco and grew up in Southern California. She received her PhD in History of Consciousness from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She served as a delegate to the United Nations’ 2001 World Conference Against Racism in Durban , representing the Indigenous Women’s Network and the American Indian Law Alliance. She is one of the founding members of Incite! Women of Color Against Violence, and is the co-founder of the Chicago chapter of Women of All Red Nations (WARN). In her commitment to combine her activist and scholarly work, she has organized several conferences that bring community activists, public intellectuals, and academics into dialogue with one another. These include the Color of Violence I & II Conferences, Race, Gender and the War Community Forum, and Decolonizing Methodology and Beyond: Constructive Proposals for Indigenous Methodologies. She is the author of Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide and co-editor, with Beth Ritchie and Julia Sudbury, of The Color of Violence: INCITE! The Anthology. Smith is an Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor with a joint appointment in Women’s Studies and the Program in American Culture (Native American Studies.) In 2005 Smith was one of 40 U.S. women nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.