Realistically, having someone of "Native American" background as a priority when trying to get a study done in the Navajo Nation is kind of overlooking some reality. I mean, "Native American" is a really big category... it's like saying "Someone of Asian Ancestry" to do a study on Korean restaurants - Mongolians, Sri Lankans, and Indonesians are all "asian", but are not useful when you're talking to people who are Korean. Sending in a Seminole or an Inuit is probably worse than sending in some run of the mill researcher who happens to be low on melanin.
More importantly, however, is that there's genuinely no need to have someone of "Native American" background at all. What you *do* need is to coordinate with the Bureau or Indian Affairs and the Navajo Tribal Council to get approval.
[generalized gripe]
It really irritates me when the proponents of DEI and all sorts of other approaches to minority advancement make the supremely short-sighted mistake of just assuming people can be easily slipped into a categorical group based on their skin color, and absolutely fail to grasp the importance of culture and tradition that really ought to be foremost. FFS, I live in an area with a high "hispanic" population... but they're not all the same, and in many cases they have long-standing gripes with each other. It's useful to know whether you're talking to people with a Mexican background or a Guatemalan background. If you live in South Florida, you sure as hell better be able to adapt and switch between culturally appropriate behaviors for Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and Colombians, as well as be able to grasp that Brazilians don't even speak ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ spanish!
Seriously, the way some of you white people casually group together all black people, as if "black people" is some useful characterization that has meaning beyond the superficiality of skin color is really frustrating. High melanin people with roots in Atlanta are not identical to those with roots in Detroit, who are not identical to those with roots in LA. And not a one of those bears any meaningful similarity to people who are first or second generation immigrants from Senegal!
Some of the people most obsessed with DEI are the absolute worst about putting people into neatly labeled little boxes with no actual understanding of those people at all. It's sorting by largely superficial means and it's incredibly discriminatory - all in the name of opposing discrimination. Even all white people end up lumped together into one huge pile without any actual knowledge being employed, as if someone from Appalachia and someone from San Francisco are totally the same, let alone someone from Nova Scotia or Minnesota.
DEI-advocates really need to stop pre-judging people based on their surface-level attributes
[/generalized gripe]
That would be awesome if it were reasonable. Part of what we're seeing is that some people refuse to make the distinction at all, and just assume that anything that
calls itself DEI is definitionally good and noble.
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