Wheaton junior Ashley Smith wins Beinecke scholarship

Wheaton junior Ashley Smith of Madison, Maine, has been awarded a Beinecke Scholarship to continue studying the effects of oppression on Native American identity in the Northeast.

A Balfour and Presidential Scholar at Wheaton, Smith is pursuing a double major in French and an anthropology major focused on Native American culture. The $30,000 Beinecke Scholarship will allow her to follow her interest in Native Americanheritage as a graduate student. She was one of 20 college undergraduates chosen for the award from the more than 100 institutions eligible to nominate candidates.

"I feel very fortunate," said Smith, who added that the scholarship will be a "huge help" in allowing her to enroll in graduate school immediately after Wheaton.

Smith came to Wheaton with some knowledge of her family's French and Abenaki heritage, but no plan to study Native American society and the oppresssion that has led to the loss of so much of its cultural heritage. In fact, she said that her family spoke little about their native ancestors. ''We went to a pow-wow in Athens, Maine, every year with my mother, but we didn't really talk about it,'' she said.

However, courses she took during her freshman year--an English 101 class on articulating multicultural identities in writing and a First Year Seminar course on the arts of festival celebrations--kindled her interest in Native American life. And her professors, Sean McPherson and Julie Searles, actively encouraged her to pursue her passion.

"It was like a snowball," said Smith, who surveyed the entire college catalog for every class relevant to her interest in Native American culture and heritage. "My professors just pushed me in the right direction and I hit all the right courses at the right time."

Among the "right courses": "Infancy Across Cultures," a psychology course taught by professor Derek Price, whose scholarship has included comparative study of childhood development among Native America cultures, particularly the Navajo. That class led to another course taught by Price, "Child Development in the Navajo Nation," a service-learning class in which students worked as student-teachers at a Navajo reservation middle school near Flagstaff, Ariz. "Those classes were incredible learning experiences," said Smith.

Professor Price notes that Smith's drive and curiosity are the real keys to her success in following an independently designed course of study. "Ashley's initiative in finding experiences relevant to her interests--within her courses and during breaks in the academic year--has yielded an unusual vita and network of professional connections for a student finishing her junior year," said Professor Price. "This all will serve her well in her honors thesis work and in whatever post-graduate work she chooses to pursue."

Indeed, Smith spent the past summer interning with the non-profit organization, Gedakina, assisting the tribal historian of the Penobscot Nation in Maine in work with tribal documents and learning a great deal of Penobscot history. She also assisted researchers working on a study of the effects of a 1930s eugenics survey in Vermont that appears to have targeted Abenaki and French people. She developed the opportunity with help from Professor of Economics Russell Williams and the support of an internship stipend she received as a Wheaton Balfour Scholar.

"Finally, I explored hidden reminants of Abenaki culture in Maine, and took part in a ceremonial for those ancestors who were killed near my hometown in the 1700s, honoring them further with a traditional luncheon," said Smith of her service with Gedakina.

Smith's internship serves as the inspiration for the senior honors thesis that she will work on over the summer. Her plan is to explore how forces of assimilation and cultural and societal oppression led many French and Abenaki people living in Maine and Vermont to hide their family backgrounds and lose their cultural heritage.

"French-Indian men and women were institutionalized and/or sterilized in the Northeast, and Franco-Americans were targeted by the KKK (believe it or not) in the same areas," said Smith, who will start her project with interviews of people involved in reviving long-lost aspects of French and Abenaki culture in the region.

After graduation, Smith plans to pursue a doctorate in anthropology with a Native American focus with an eye toward a career in college teaching and research.

"I'm interesting in trying to pass on this knowledge about Native American heritage to others, but I'm also interested in what I can learn about my own family background, their experiences of oppression and the traditions that have shaped who we are."