Dr. Andrew Jolivétte (Atakapa-Ishak Nation of Louisiana [Tsikip/Opelousa/Heron Clan]) is Professor and Chair of the Ethnic Studies Department at the University of California, San Diego as well as the inaugural founding Director of Native American and Indigenous Studies at UCSD. A former professor and Department Chair of American Indian Studies at San Francisco State University, he is the author or editor of nine books in print or forthcoming including the Lammy Award nominated, Indian Blood: HIV and Colonial Trauma in San Francisco’s Two-Spirit Community. His scholarship examines Native American, Indigenous, Creole, Black, Latinx, Queer, Mixed-Race, and Comparative Critical Ethnic Studies.

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Andrew Jolivétte (Atakapa-Ishak Nation of Louisiana [Tsikip/Opelousa/Heron Clan]) is an accomplished, internationally-recognized researcher, educator, author, poet, speaker, socio-cultural critic, and an aspiring chef. He is a senior specialist and professor in Native American and Indigenous Studies at the University of California, San Diego in the Department of Ethnic Studies which he also chairs. He is also 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 was previously a professor and department chair of American Indian Studies at San Francisco State University (2001-2019)

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)
• Queer Indigenous Futurity and Kinship: Thrivance Circuitry “Settler” Violence, and Anti-Blackness (University of Washington Press, Indigenous Confluences Series, December 2021)

Jolivétte’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.

He has also written numerous  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).    Professor Jolivette was the Series Editor of Critical Indigenous and American Indian Studies at Peter Lang Publishing in New York from 2014-2016.

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. Jolivétte is an editorial board member for the Journal of Critical Mixed Race Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is Scholar in Residence for the MultiRacial Network of the American College Personnel Association for the 2020-21 academic year.

Active in both scholarship and community organizing, Jolivétte currently 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 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. Jolivétte 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.

Born and raised in San Francisco in 1975 to Annetta Donna Foster Jolivette and Kenneth Louis Jolivétte, he is a noted Louisiana Creole educator of Atakapa-Ishak (Tsikip/Opelousa/Heron Clan of the Sunrise People), French, African, Irish, Italian, and Spanish descent. Professor Jolivétte 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, NCORE, 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.

Jolivétte 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.