Dina Gilio-Whitaker
American journalist from California, U.S.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dina Gilio-Whitaker is an American academic, journalist, and author, who studies Native Americans in the United States, decolonization, and environmental justice.[1] She is a Colville Confederated Tribes direct descendant. In 2019, she published As Long as Grass Grows.
Dina Gilio-Whitaker | |
|---|---|
| Born | California, United States |
| Citizenship | American |
| Academic background | |
| Education | University of New Mexico |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | American Indian Studies |
| Institutions | California State University San Marcos |
Notable works |
|
Early life and education
Dina Gilio-Whitaker is a direct descendant of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation with Okanogan and Sinixt ancestry.[2] Her mother was a Colville tribal citizen.[2] Gilio-Whitaker was born and grew up in Southern California.[2]
As a mature student, Gilio-Whitaker studied at the University of New Mexico, initially intending to go into a legal career. Her master's thesis, Panhe at the Crossroads: Toward an Indigenized Environmental Justice Discourse, was on the topic of Indigenous American protests against a toll road being built on sacred land that was also a significant surfing location.[3][1]
Career
In 2016, Gilio-Whitaker co-authored "All the Real Indians Died Off" and 20 Other Myths About Native Americans with Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz.[1][4] In 2017, she wrote a chapter of The Critical Surfer Reader (2017) titled "Appropriating Surfing and the Politics of Indigenous Authenticity".[5]
Since 2017, Gilio-Whitaker has lectured in American Indian Studies at California State University San Marcos, commuting from San Clemente, California. She was offered the position a year earlier, but declined due to book tour responsibilities.[3][5] She supports a scholarly framework known as "indigenized environmental justice", in which environmentalism would take into account "the history of colonization as a historical process of dispossession of native peoples and their lands in order to understand the way native people are still fighting these battles".[5]
In 2019, Gilio-Whitaker published As Long as Grass Grows. The book outlines the effect of American settlers on indigenous Americans since 1492, the modern environmentalism movement and indigenous approaches to environmental stewardship.[6][7][8]
Gilio-Whitaker is also a senior research associate and policy director at the Center for World Indigenous Studies. She runs the company DGW Consulting.[5][1] She has also volunteered for the Institute for Women Surfers, Native Like Water and the San Onofre Parks Foundation.[9] She maintains a blog, Ruminative.[1]
Personal
In 1980, Gilio-Whitaker moved to North Shore in the Hawaiian Islands. She returned to California, got married, and moved to San Clemente, California. She is a surfer.[1]
Selected works
Books
- Dunbar-Ortiz, Roxanne; Gilio-Whitaker, Dina (2016). "All the Real Indians Died Off" and 20 Other Myths About Native Americans. Beacon Press.
- Gilio-Whitaker, Dina (2019). As Long as Grass Grows. Beacon Press.
- Gilio-Whitaker, Dina (2025). Who Gets to Be Indian?: Ethnic Fraud, Disenrollment, and other Difficult Conversations about Native American Identity. Boston: Beacon Press. ISBN 978-0-8070-4496-4.
Journal articles
- Gilio-Whitaker, Dina (2015). "Idle No More and Fourth World Social Movements in the New Millennium". South Atlantic Quarterly. 114 (4): 866–877. doi:10.1215/00382876-3157391.
- Gilio-Whitaker, Dina (2015–2016). "Fourth World Nations' Collision with Capitalism in the United States". Fourth World Journal. 13 (2).
News articles
- Gilio-Whitaker, Dina (May 15, 2017). "Beachfront Nuclear Wasteland in Southern California?". Indian Country Today.
- Gilio-Whitaker, Dina (November 29, 2018). "How Native Americans in the arts are preserving tradition in a changing world". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved August 24, 2021.
