Dwanna L. Robertson is a citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, Ph.D. candidate at the UMASS–Amherst, a public sociologist, and columnist for Indian Country Today Media Network. Dwanna's research focuses on the reproduction of social inequality through institutionalized race, ethnicity, and gender processes, particularly for American Indians. Dwanna's current project, “Navigating Indigenous Identity,” examines the problematic processes around American Indian identity and the consequences associated with different forms of identity representation—ethnic, racial, tribal, and legal—for Indigenous Peoples in the United States. Through her concept of American Indian Legal Identity, she reveals the critical role of structure and power in the ultimate disenfranchisement of tens of thousands of American Indians from their tribal communities. She reports the subsequent effects of chronic social and psychosocial disadvantages of imposed racialization created within federally-defined and tribally-reified authenticity measures.
