Andrew James Jolivétte is an American sociologist and author. He is a professor at the University of California, San Diego, where he is chair of the department of Ethnic Studies. He is the co-chair of UC Ethnic Studies Council.
Jolivétte was born in San Francisco in 1975 to Annetta Donan Foster Jolivette and Kenneth Louis Jolivétte. Born and raised in San Francisco, he attended Catholic schools and lived in the Bay Area for decades before moving to Southern California. He is a Louisiana Creole, and writes that the United States should recognize all Creoles of color as American Indians.
He was the focus of an investigation by Keeler, questioning the legitimacy of his tribe.
Education
Jolivétte earned his bachelor's degree in sociology with a minor in English literature and a certificate in ethnic studies from the University of San Francisco. He earned his master's degree in sociology from San Francisco State University in 1999. His thesis was titled, "Native America: White Indians, Black Indians and the Contemporary Privilege of Color." He earned his doctoral degree in sociology from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 2003, with a dissertation titled "Creole Diaspora: (Re)articulating the Social, Legal, Economic, and Regional Construction of American Indian Identity."
Career
Jolivétte was a professor and chair of the American Indian studies department at San Francisco State University from 2010 to 2016. He became the founding Director of the Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS) Program at the University of California, San Diego, in 2020. The NAIS Program includes a minor, graduate certificate, and culture bearer-in-residence program. Jolivétte is co-chair of the University of California Ethnic Studies Council.
Scholar Renate Bartl writes that Jolivétte misquoted sources in his work. In The Cane River Creoles of Color (Mills 1977), she says he quotes that ancestress Marie Thérèze Coincoin was 'of African and indigenous American origins', when the text, and the sources used by Mills, only specify her being of African origins. She spotlights a directly modified passage, which he cites from Mills:
...Coincoin turned to African and Indigenous American cultural remedies including a knowledge of herbal medicines gained from her own parents. (Jolivétte 2007, 13)
whereas Mills writes: "Marie Thérèze, who has gained from her African parents a knowledge of herbal medicines..." (Mills 1977, xxvii). Bartl writes that this, in addition to other discrepancies, harm the scientific reliability of the work presented.
Bibliography
Cultural Representation in Native America. Rowman Altamira. 2006. ISBN0-7591-0985-0.
Louisiana Creoles: Cultural Recovery and Mixed-race Native American Identity. Lexington Books. 2007. ISBN978-0-7391-1896-2.
Obama and the Biracial Factor: The Battle for a New American Majority. Policy Press. 2012. ISBN978-1447301004.
Crash Course: Reflections on the Film Crash for Critical Dialogues About Race, Power, and Privilege, ed. Michael Benitez Jr. and Felicia Gustin (2007).
John Brown Childs, Hurricane Katrina: Response and Responsibilities, ed. John Brown Childs (2005)
"Critical Mixed Race Studies: New Approaches to Resistance and Social Justice," in Color Struck: Essays on Race and Ethnicity in Global Perspective, ed. Julius Adekunle and Hettie V Williams (2010).
Notes
↑In addition, he says he is of Nigerian, Senegambian, Ghanaian, Cameroonian, Guinean, French, Spanish, Italian, Cajun, Mexican, Congolese, Angolan, Southern East African, Canadian, Isleño, Irish, Haitian, Portuguese, English, Scottish, and German descent.
References
12Native America: White Indians, Black Indians and the Contemporary Privilege of Color. OCLC41752380.
