The Director and Associate Director of the American Indian Studies Center and the Chair of the American Indian Studies Department, along with our respective Faculty Advisory Committee members, call on the University of California to negotiate in good faith to honor the demands of teaching assistants, tutors, readers, student researchers, postdocs, and academic researchers represented by three unions–UAW 2865, UAW 5810, and SRU-UAW–for livable wages, affordable housing, child care subsidies, and other basic necessities. We also firmly recommit to our policy of non-retaliation for any of our students who engage in union activities. Graduate student labor is fundamental to our pedagogical and scholarly enterprise, which cannot be sustained without improving their living and working conditions.
Dr. Shannon Speed (Chickasaw)
Director, UCLA American Indian Studies Center
Professor, UCLA Gender Studies/Anthropology/American Indian Studies
Special Advisor to the Chancellor on Native American and Indigenous Affairs
Dr. Erin Debenport (she/her/hers)
Associate Professor & Vice Chair for Graduate Studies, UCLA Anthropology
Associate Director, UCLA American Indian Studies Center
Chair of the Faculty, UCLA College of Letters and Science