A Social Biography of Hopi Activist, Ernest Naquayouma

Hopi activist, Ernest Naquayouma, was a co-founder of the American Indian Center in Chicago, which was the first urban, intertribal, Native-run community center in the United States (est. 1953). He is also well-known for the work he did with US ethnolinguist Benjamin Lee Whorf in the 1930s. Although the literature on these topics often mentions Naquayouma's name, the significance of his role in both of these stories has been largely overlooked. Recent scholarship has revealed a more in-depth picture of Naquayouma's biography. This has shed new light on the history of the American Indian Center and on Whorf's work. It has also invited a reappraisal of Naquayouma's significance as a historical actor. In this article Robert Edwards offers an overview of Naquayouma's life story to supplement the existing historical record. Edwards argues that Naquayouma's life illustrated three key features of the American Indian self-determination movement in the first half of the twentieth century: (1) the anti-colonial traditionalist politics of North American tribal nations; (2) the intertribal social networks that bridged reservations and urban centers across the country; and (3) the pan-Indianism social movement, which fostered a shared American Indian identity among diverse tribal groups. For these reasons, Naquayouma's story is relevant to the field of American Indian history. It is also relevant to American studies and science studies, insofar as it provides insight into the settler-colonial nature of US culture, and the subaltern politics of ethnographic consultants.