From the Editors
One of our primary goals as editors of Contexts magazine is to highlight and center scholarship that often gets pushed to the periphery. We did this for our Summer 2020 special thematic issue on Indigenous sociology. We brought on two experts on Indigenous studies—Nicholas Reo and Angela Gonzales—to serve as our guest editors.
Nicholas is an Associate Professor of Native American and Environmental Studies at Dartmouth College, where he studies Indigenous knowledge and ecological stewardship on Indigenous lands. He is a citizen of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians. He also runs the Homelands Collective, which includes students, faculty, and community knowledge holders invested in indigenous environmental work and indigenous environmental studies. The collective supports Indigenous nations’ and organizations’ efforts to care for their homelands—the lands and waters that give life to our societies.
Angela is an Associate Professor of Sociology, in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University. Her research crosscuts and integrates the fields of Sociology and Native American/Indigenous Studies with community-based research examining sociological processes related to identity, civic engagement, and community health. Angela is an enrolled member of the Hopi Tribe from the Village of Shungopavy (Spider Clan). She is past-President of the Hopi Education Endowment Fund and currently serves of the Board of the Colorado Plateau Foundation.
We center Nicholas and Angela’s community-based participatory research because it matters. Scholars can publish in academic journals and use their research to help inform policy and empower communities. Nick and Angela do this in our special issue on Indigenous sociology.
In addition to the articles on Indigenous sociology highlighted in Nicholas and Angela’s guest editor letter below, we have a slate of works across the magazine. In our Feature Article section, Stapleton, Sauder, and Hallett have a provocative and compelling article on public ideas and how they are socially constructed. Bodovski provides insight into the behavior of parents caught in the college admission scandal that rocked higher education in the United States. Our In Pictures section features something near and dear to Nicholas’ life—skateparks, and how they started as churches. Trends features the representation of women in political parties, and the Culture section focuses on how quilters have stepped up and used their skill during the pandemic. The Books section provides insightful reviews of some of the most notable recent books on race including Irbam Kendi’s How to be an Antiracist and Jonathan Metzl’s Dying of Whiteness.
Finally, be sure to take a good look at the cover for this issue. It features the work of Dillen Peace, an Indigenous artist.
Rashawn Ray and Fabio Rojas
Visit http://journals.sagepub.com/home/ctx to read the issue or go to www.contexts.org.
