Circe Sturm

Circe Dawn Sturm was born in Houston, Texas. She identifies her father as being of Mississippi Choctaw descent and her mother as being Italian American.{{Cite book|title=Speaking of Indigenous Politics: Conversations with Activists, Scholars, and Tribal Leaders |publisher=University of Minnesota Press |editor-last= Kauanui |editor-first=J. Kēhaulani |others=foreword by Robert Warrior |year=2018 |isbn=978-1-4529-5714-2 |location=Minneapolis |chapter=Circe Sturm on Cherokee identity politics and the phenomenon of racial shifting|oclc=1033547171}} However, the Tribal Alliance Against Frauds wrote that they, in Sturm's words, "can find no evidence of my having Choctaw or Cherokee ancestry..."{{cite web |last1=Strum |first1=Circe |title=Response to TAAF |url=https://minio.la.utexas.edu/colaweb-prod/profile/custom_pages/0/1591/response_to_taaf_c759fd45-99a2-4586-b679-d4a8e67d0dd7.pdf |website=Anthropology, College of Liberal Arts |publisher=University of Texas at Austin |access-date=18 February 2025 |date=5 February 2025}} In Blood Politics, Sturm wrote, "I had always known that my paternal grandmother was Mississippi Choctaw on her mother's side and very distantly Cherokee on her father's side."{{cite book |last1=Sturm |first1=Circe Dawn |title=Blood Politics: Racial Hybridity and Identity in the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma |date=1997 |publisher=Davis |location=University of California |isbn=9780520230972 |page=8 |url=https://www.google.com/books/edition/Blood_Politics/gsbRyZ5CUE0C |access-date=18 February 2025}} In 2025, she wrote that by 2011, "I had dropped the Cherokee descent claim entirely..." She wrote that her aunt and great-aunt told her that "Lizzie Wesley, my great-great grandmother, was the daughter of a full blood Mississippi Choctaw women" but neither aunt knew her name. Her great-grandmother was born in Ellisville, Mississippi. Sturm hired three genealogists to help her find Choctaw roots, but she writes, "None of them were able to find early records for Lizzie..." Professor Kim Tallbear, an expert in Indigenous identity fraud, called the Tribal Alliance Against Frauds' investigations "courageous" and agreed with their conclusion that Sturm has no American Indian ancestry.https://kimtallbear.substack.com/p/statement-on-the-taaf-self-indigenizationhttps://tribalallianceagainstfrauds.org/circe-dawn-sturm

Sturm has written two books on Cherokee identity. Blood Politics (2002) presents results of her ethnographic fieldwork in the Cherokee Nation from 1995 to 1998. Becoming Indian (2011) discusses the concept of race shifting:{{Cite web|url=http://www.raceshifting.com/bibliography/|title=Bibliography|last=Leroux|first=Darryl|date=|website=Raceshifting|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190701062943/http://www.raceshifting.com:80/bibliography/ |archive-date=2019-07-01 |access-date=2020-03-27}} how a rapidly growing number of people in the United States are self-identifying as Native American – usually, as Cherokee – without any documentation to support their claims. Race shifting is not just confined to the United States, but has also been observed in Canada.{{Cite web|url=http://theconversation.com/becoming-indigenous-the-rise-of-eastern-metis-in-canada-80794|title=Becoming Indigenous: The rise of Eastern Métis in Canada|last1=Leroux|first1=Darryl|last2=Gaudry|first2=Adam|date=October 25, 2017|website=The Conversation|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171026024440/http://theconversation.com/becoming-indigenous-the-rise-of-eastern-metis-in-canada-80794 |archive-date=2017-10-26 |access-date=2020-03-27}}{{Cite web|url=https://www.metisnews.com/aboriginal-news/a-little-bit-indigenous|title=A 'little bit Indigenous'?|last=|first=|date=2019-09-24|website=Metis Nation News|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200327171117/https://www.metisnews.com/aboriginal-news/a-little-bit-indigenous |archive-date=2020-03-27 |access-date=2020-03-27}} Sturm has been interviewed on issues relating to Cherokee identity, such as the Cherokee Freedmen controversy{{Cite web|url=https://www.wnyc.org/story/165525-fight-be-called-cherokee/|title=The Fight to Be Called Cherokee {{!}} The Takeaway|website=WNYC|language=en|access-date=2020-03-27}}{{Cite news|last=Mays|first=Kyle|url=https://indiancountrytoday.com/archive/still-waiting-cherokee-freedman-say-they-re-not-going-anywhere-U8cpetjnfkGMfEGe9beN5g|title=Still waiting: Cherokee Freedman say they're not going anywhere|date=July 20, 2015|work=Indian Country Today|access-date=2020-03-27}} and Elizabeth Warren's claims to Cherokee ancestry.{{Cite web|url=https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/warren-still-dogged-by-past-claims-of-indigenous-ancestry|title=Warren still dogged by past claims of Indigenous ancestry|last=|first=|date=2020-02-27|website=PBS NewsHour|language=en-us|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200228023028/https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/warren-still-dogged-by-past-claims-of-indigenous-ancestry |archive-date=2020-02-28 |access-date=2020-03-27}}

Before joining UT Austin, Sturm taught at the University of Oklahoma.{{Cite book|last=|first=|title=Gale Literature: Contemporary Authors|publisher=Gale|year=2008|isbn=|location=|pages=|chapter=Circe Sturm}}

Sturm and Craig Cambell launched a project called Mapping Indigenous Texas, to created an interactive tool to teach about Native American tribes in Texas.{{cite news |last1=Koksoy |first1=Atahan |title=Mapping Indigenous Texas project awarded 2023-2024 Research and Creative Grant |url=https://thedailytexan.com/2024/04/25/mapping-indigenous-texas-project-awarded-2023-2024-research-and-creative-grant/ |access-date=18 February 2025 |work=The Daily Texas |date=24 April 2024}}

• Blood Politics: Race, Culture and Identity in the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma{{Cite book|last=Sturm |first=Circe |title=Blood Politics: Race, Culture and Identity in the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma |date=2002 |location=Berkeley |publisher=University of California Press|isbn=978-0-520-93608-9 |oclc=52996181}}
• Becoming Indian: The Struggle over Cherokee Identity in the Twenty-First Century{{Cite book|last=Sturm |first=Circe |title=Becoming Indian: The Struggle Over Cherokee Identity in the Twenty-first Century |date=2011|publisher=School for Advanced Research Press|isbn=978-1-934691-44-1|edition=1st|location=Santa Fe, New Mexico |oclc=671541010}}
• "Reflections on the anthropology of sovereignty and settler colonialism: lessons from Native North America."{{Cite journal|last=Sturm|first=Circe|date=2017-08-19|title=Reflections on the Anthropology of Sovereignty and Settler Colonialism: Lessons from Native North America|url=https://journal.culanth.org/index.php/ca/article/view/ca32.3.03|journal=Cultural Anthropology|language=en|volume=32|issue=3|pages=340–348|doi=10.14506/ca32.3.03|issn=1548-1360|doi-access=free}}
• Say, Listen: Writing as Care by the Black Indigenous 100s Collective (2024), contributor{{cite web |last1=Black Indigenous 100s Collective |title=Say, listen: writing as care |url=https://search.worldcat.org/title/1412258751 |website=WorldCat |access-date=18 February 2025}}

• Blood quantum laws
• Cherokee descent
• Detribalization
• Native American identity in the United States
• Pretendian
• Unrecognized tribes

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Category:Living people

Category:American actresses

Category:American people of Choctaw descent

Category:American women academics

Category:University of California, Davis alumni

Category:University of Texas at Austin faculty

Category:Year of birth missing (living people)

Category:21st-century American women writers