Navigating North and South for Native Knowledge
Anthropology
Erich Fox Tree
Title: Carolina Diversity Postdoctoral Fellow, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
Education: M.A., Ph.D., Anthropology, Stanford University; M.A., American Civilizations, University of Pennsylvania; B.A., Social Anthropology, Harvard University
Age: 35
Dr. Erich Fox Tree didn’t plan to study linguistic anthropology, but fieldwork in Guatemala prompted him to examine the intersection of language, identity and politics. Fox Tree spent more than two years in Guatemala to observe how its rural peoples have become living examples of historical and comparative linguistic theories.
It’s a line of inquiry that seems natural for an anthropologist whose grandparents were the last speakers, as far as he knows, of the language of the Lesser Antilles.
“My family was from the Caribbean,” Fox Tree says. “My indigenous group used to occupy at least 20 countries in the Caribbean, from south Florida to the north of South America, and there are still people in South America who speak related languages.”
The wide distribution of this indigenous group reinforced an awareness of pan-Native cultural identity that began in childhood and led him to Harvard, where he was awarded a Mellon Minority Undergraduate Fellowship in his junior year. After graduating, he traveled and studied informally in Europe for more than a year before entering the graduate program in American civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania.
“My goal had been to study hemispheric pan-Nativism in the United States by examining the interactions of North American Natives and Native American immigrants from Latin America,” he says. The closure of the academic department prompted Fox Tree to apply to Stanford University, which he called “a life-changing decision for the better.”
Fox Tree chose Stanford for its innovative program in anthropology, which included a wide range of traditional and contemporary specialties, such as Mesoamerican and Maya studies, feminist anthropology, political ecology, ethnicity and nationalism and language ideology. Also, Stanford did not require traditional fieldwork. But one of his professors told Fox Tree that fieldwork, especially outside the country, would benefit his career.
