SAIO 50 for 50: Dr. Renya Ramirez

This Week's Spotlight:  Dr. Renya Ramirez ('99, M.A. Anthropology & Ph.D. Education)

Dr. Ramirez (Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska) is a Professor of Anthropology at UC Santa Cruz and is the author of two books, Standing Up to Colonial Power: the Lives of Henry Roe and Elizabeth Bender Cloud and Native Hubs: Culture, Community and Belonging in Silicon Valley and Beyond. Her research interests include Native feminisms, documentary film, settler colonialism, diaspora, transnationalism, urban Native Americans, gendered citizenships, critical mission studies, and family/tribal history. She is working on a third book about the Native women of the Alcatraz occupation, including her mother, Woesha Cloud North, and finishing a 60-minute film documentary about her grandfather, Henry Roe Cloud.

Dr. Ramirez is a co-editor of Gendered Citizenships:Transnational Perspectives on Knowledge Production, Political Activism, and Culture. She is co-Principal Investigator of a one million dollar critical mission studies grant from the University of California Office of the President, working in collaboration with California Indians, in order to tell the history of the California missions and aftermath from a California Indian perspective.

Dr. Ramirez was a member of the founding committee that created Stanford’s CSRE Department and helped develop the Native Studies major. She was inspired to become a Native Studies professor by her mother, Woesha Cloud North, who taught in Native studies, starting in the early 1970s when Native American studies began at San Francisco State and after living on Alcatraz during the occupation.  

Dr. Ramirez's Interview