Faculty Profile

Assistant Professor and Director of Graduate Studies
Indigenous Studies
rcaldwel@buffalo.edu

• PhD, History and Geography, The University of Texas at Arlington, 2018
  
• MA, Heritage Resources, Northwestern State University, 2011
• MS, Labor Studies, University of Massachusetts—Amherst, 2003

• Assistant Professor, Indigenous Studies, University at Buffalo
  

As a mentor and guide, I ensure all students have access to the foundations necessary for success. Each student draws from their personal cultural framework and their own prior experiences in their learning. Students are individuals. They must have a stimulating educational environment where they can grow mentally, emotionally and socially to achieve the success they desire.

Diversity is ranked high among my concerns as a teacher, community member and colleague. I have worked diligently to increase opportunities for traditionally underrepresented people. The past 25 years of my life have been dedicated to working with others to build a more just world. I have been actively engaged in issues of ecology, transit accessibility and worker's rights. I have served on boards of multiple organizations that work with a diverse set of populations ranging from Indigenous Peoples and African Americans to LGBTQ+ and Two-Spirit People to Mixed-Race and Immigrant groups. As a returning resident of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, I co-founded the New Orleans Workers' Center for Racial Justice.

My own experience with higher education began while working a full-time job and attending community college in Louisiana. I faced anti-Native discrimination and struggled with a lack of basic resources such as transportation, housing and food. I confronted negative self-esteem while struggling to stay in school. I eventually overcame these and other obstacles to achieve stability and academic success. Now I am emboldened to help transform institutional culture to reflect true diversity and to help individual students overcome their unique challenges.

In the past decade, I have also been moralized by radical and grassroots organizing amongst BIPOC youth and revivified social movements within working-class communities. Their movements have demanded justice and remind us that physical representations of diversity in the corporate boardroom and academia are not enough.

I have mentored students of color in diverse settings, including large campuses like the University of Texas at Arlington, where I mentored undergraduate Native students and worked to develop strong leaders and build capacity for the Native American Student Association. At SOWELA Community College, I participated in a one-semester structured mentorship with BIPOC students, which grew into a long-term friendship that continues today. A major component of my appointment at Hampshire College was weekly mentoring and advising BIPOC and neurodivergent students.