Aloha mai kakou and welcome to the 2021-2022 academic year! Our curriculum is designed and taught by a distinguished and interdisciplinary faculty who collaborate with over 20 different Native communities and countless community organizations. As much as the American Indian Studies Program at UCLA is devoted to the study of Indigenous peoples, as a land grant institution we are committed to directly engaging with and working for the Indigenous peoples of California and beyond. Among them, we have a particular commitment to the Tongva as the taraaxatom (Indigenous peoples) of Tovaangar (Los Angeles basin, So. Channel Islands).

The past year has been a complicated one for everyone. We experienced a global reckoning with the legacy of colonization, displacement and structural racism all accented by a pandemic that lays bare the deep disparities and negative outcomes faced by Indigenous peoples and people of color. We embark on this academic year with a renewed sense of the power and importance of scholarship in shaping research, teaching and giving voice to and strengthening communities. We hope that we are able to teach, learn and assemble safely in this coming year. Our investments in AIS’s undergraduate Major and Minor programs and its MA program are more important than ever. With humility, respect, and optimism I look forward to welcoming all of you in the near future in person and virtually so that we can all continue to build on the legacy of UCLA’s AIS program begun more than 50 years ago.