Mellon Foundation Awards Montclair $1M to Expand Native American and Indigenous Studies Program

The Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS) program of Montclair State University’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences has been awarded a three-year, $1 million grant from the Mellon Foundation to create a new center, the New Jersey Center for Indigenous Justice (NJCIJ), and to expand its programing.

With its commitment to Indigenous rights, racial justice, decolonization and eco-justice, the NAIS program emphasizes the priorities of New Jersey’s state-recognized Native American tribes – the Ramapough Lunaape, Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape and Powhatan Renape nations – which include environmental justice, political recognition, cultural heritage and language revitalization.

The NJCIJ will be a center for communication, fundraising, events and gatherings that highlight the unique questions facing Montclair’s Indigenous students and New Jersey’s tribal communities. It will coordinate the University’s work to change public narratives, increase Indigenous student enrollment and pursue justice-oriented action on issues affecting Native people in the state.

“The NJCIJ will give focus to the varied work Montclair faculty and students are doing in partnership with New Jersey’s tribal communities,” says Anthropology Department Chair Chris Matthews, a co-director of NAIS and co-Principal Investigator of the grant. “[It] will be the first and only university-based project in New Jersey that aims to transform public understanding of Native people and to do so in partnership with Indigenous communities across the state.”

About the New Jersey Center for Indigenous Justice and NAIS Program Grant

In addition to Matthews, the co-Principal Investigators of the grant include Religion Professor Mark Clatterbuck, Anthropology Professor Maisa Taha and Educational Foundations Professor Lisa Lynn Brooks, all fellow co-directors of the Native American and Indigenous Studies program.

The grant funds will be used to establish the New Jersey Center for Indigenous Justice and achieve the following goals:

• Deepen the impact of the NAIS program by providing additional resources and support for interdisciplinary collaboration and research.
• Establish a digital repository of tribal knowledge and resources to ensure their preservation and availability to tribal members, and to Montclair faculty and students.
• Hire a NJCIJ director who will promote increased engagement with the New Jersey tribes and with Indigenous issues, while also helping to recruit and mentor a growing number of New Jersey tribal members at the University.

Native American and Indigenous Initiatives at Montclair State University

Montclair State University is committed to increasing the awareness and knowledge of New Jersey’s Native American tribes and the issues they face.

As demonstrated by the adoption of a Land Acknowledgement Statement in 2022 that recognizes that the University occupies territory historically known as Lenapehoking, the homeland of all Lenape people, the University is committed to social justice and to offering learning opportunities and promoting Native American culture and history.

In addition to the Native American and Indigenous Studies minor, some of these initiatives include:

• Celebrating Indigenous Peoples Day
• Annual NAIS Summer Field School
• NAIS Student Organization
• Lectures and Panels

“The Mellon Foundation grant will significantly increase Montclair’s ability to fulfill our commitment to addressing the historical legacies of Indigenous dispossession and dismantling practices of erasure that persist today, as stated in our University Land Acknowledgement,” says Clatterbuck. “The new center, in tandem with our Native American and Indigenous Studies program, is focused on Indigenizing New Jersey while decolonizing educational, social and political legacies that continue to overlook Native people and exploit Native lands.”

About The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is the nation’s largest supporter of the arts and humanities. Since 1969, the Foundation has been guided by its core belief that the humanities and arts are essential to human understanding. The Foundation believes that the arts and humanities are where we express our complex humanity, and that everyone deserves the beauty, transcendence, and freedom that can be found there. Through our grants, we seek to build just communities enriched by meaning and empowered by critical thinking, where ideas and imagination can thrive. Learn more at mellon.org.

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