Andrew Jolivette

Andrew Jolivétte, professor and former department chair of American Indian Studies at San Francisco State University (2001-2019) is an accomplished, internationally recognized American researcher, educator, author, poet, speaker, socio-cultural critic, and an aspiring chef. He began a new position at the University of California, San Diego in the Department of Ethnic Studies as senior specialist and professor in Native American and Indigenous Studies in July 2019. In March 2020, he became the inaugural founding Director of Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS) at UC San Diego. The NAIS Program will feature a minor and Ph.D. Emphasis. Dr. Jolivétte currently serves as the Department Chair of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, San Diego.

Jolivette serves as the Board President of the American Indian Community Cultural Center for the Arts in San Francisco, California where he was Executive Director from 2016-2019. He is the author or editor of nine books in print or forthcoming: Cultural Representation in Native America (Rowman and Littlefield, 2006); Louisiana Creoles: Cultural Recovery and Mixed-Race Native American Identity (Rowman and Littlefield, 2007); Obama and the Biracial Factor: The Battle for a New American Majority (University of Chicago Press, 2012); Research Justice: Methodologies for Social Change (University of Chicago Press, 2015); Indian Blood: HIV and Colonial Trauma in San Francisco’s Two-Spirit Community (Indigenous Confluences Series, University of Washington Press, 2016); American Indian and Indigenous Education: A Survey Text for the 21st Century (Cognella 2019); Louisiana Creole Peoplehood: Tracing Post-Contact Afro-Indigeneity and Community (University of Washington Press, April 2021 *Co-Editor); Gumbo Circuitry: Poetic Routes, Gastronomic Legacies (That Painted Horse Press, July 2021); and Thrivance Circuitry: Queer Afro-Indigenous Futurity and Kinship (University of Washington Press, Indigenous Confluences Series, December 2021) and many journal articles, chapters, reviews and community studies including, A Report on the Health and Wellness of Multiracial Youth in the San Francisco Bay Area (2008) and guest editor of the American Indian Culture and Research Journal’s “Indigenous Locations Post-Katrina: Beyond Invisibility and Disaster” (2008).

Jolivette’s book, Indian Blood: HIV and Colonial Trauma in San Francisco’s Two-Spirit Community was a finalist for best book in the LGBTQ Studies category for a Lambda Literary Award in June 2017.[1] The Lammys are the world’s most prestigious LGBTQ Book Award Ceremony. Professor Jolivette was the Series Editor of Critical Indigenous and American Indian Studies at Peter Lang Publishing in New York from 2014-2016 and he was the Indigenous Peoples’ Representative at the United Nations Forum on HIV and the Law in 2011 during his two-year fellowship as an IHART (Indigenous HIV/AIDS Research Training Program) Fellow at the Indigenous Wellness Research Institute at the University of Washington in Seattle where he currently serves as scientific mentor to new fellows. He is a Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow (2004-2005) and former Diversity Fellowship Panel Reviewer for Ford. He has also served as a peer review expert for SAMSHA and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. Jolivette is an editorial board member for the Journal of Critical Mixed Race Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is a founding editor of the Journal of Louisiana Creole Studies.

Active in both scholarship and community organizing he has served as the board president for the Institute for Democratic Education and Culture (Speak Out), iPride for Multiracial Youth and Families, and the GLBT Historical Society and Museum. He is the founder of the group Black Men’s Space and a former board member of DataCenter for Research Justice (Vice-President), the African American Art and Culture Complex, the Center for Restorative Solutions, and SF Black Community Matters. Jolivette currently serves on the board of the Black Community Collective. He has been a member of the National Association for Ethnic Studies (NAES) serving twice as conference co-chair, the Pacific Sociological Association, the American Sociological Association, the Critical Mixed Race Studies Association, and the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association among other academic associations. Jolivette is the series editor of Black Indigenous Futures and Speculations at Routledge and the 2020-21 Scholar in Residence for the MultiRacial Network of the American College Personnel Association.

Born and raised in San Francisco in 1975 to Annetta Donna Foster Jolivette and Kenneth Louis Jolivette, he is a noted Louisiana Creole educator of Atakapa-Ishak [Tsikip/Heron Clan]), French, African, Irish, Italian, and Spanish descent. Professor Jolivette is the former tribal historian for the Atakapa-Ishak Nation located between southwest Louisiana and southeast Texas. As an internationally recognized speaker he has spoken to thousands of college students, educators, researchers, student personnel officers (NASPA, APCA, and AACRAO), government employees and private and non-profit sector organizations over the past decade across the United States, Canada, the Netherlands and Australia.

Jolivette received his Ph.D in Sociology from the University of California, Santa Cruz (and is listed as a notable alumni) with specializations in the sociology of race and ethnicity, the sociology of education, the sociology of Latin America, and in the sociology of family. He also holds an MA in Sociology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, an MA in Ethnic Studies with a concentration in American Indian Studies from San Francisco State University, and BA in Sociology with a minor in English Literature and a Certificate in Ethnic Studies from the University of San Francisco.