American Indian Studies, MS postgraduate personal statement example

Personal statement example

Every hire agreement at the tool depot where I work has a clause on termination: what happens when the customer or the company ends the contract early. I had processed hundreds of them before I noticed how ordinary the word had become to me, and how differently it reads in the documents I spent my final undergraduate year studying. In the 1950s the United States Congress used 'termination' to describe ending its federal relationship with particular tribal nations. Understanding how a word associated with administration could carry such consequences is one reason I want to pursue postgraduate study in American Indian Studies.

My BA in American Studies began with a broad survey of United States history, but a second-year course on federal Indian policy changed the direction of my degree. We read Vine Deloria Jr.'s Custer Died for Your Sins, and I was struck by his argument that Native nations were repeatedly described and managed by outsiders who rarely asked what those nations wanted. As a British student with no family or community connection to Native America, I took that criticism personally. It made me think carefully about my position as someone studying these histories from outside.

My dissertation examined how the termination of the Menominee Nation of Wisconsin was argued for in congressional hearings and committee reports from the mid-1950s, using digitised transcripts available through my university library. I compared the language of economic self-sufficiency used by supporters of House Concurrent Resolution 108 with the concerns recorded from Menominee representatives about land, forestry and the tribal hospital. I found that 'readiness' was treated as a financial measure, while Menominee speakers kept returning to questions of governance and continuity. The project received a strong mark, but its main value for me was learning its limits. I was relying almost entirely on federal records, so Menominee voices reached me already filtered through government procedure. I want to work with a wider range of sources, and to learn methods that treat tribal perspectives as starting points rather than responses.

Since graduating I have worked full-time at the hire depot. The job is practical: checking equipment back in, explaining safety requirements and handling disputes about damage charges calmly. It has taught me to read documents closely and to recognise how terms that seem neutral can feel quite different to the person bound by them. I have kept reading alongside it. Philip J. Deloria's Playing Indian, which traces how non-Native Americans have adopted imagined Indian identities to define themselves, made me more aware of how British popular culture has borrowed similar images, and of the need to question my own assumptions.

Outside work I ring bells at my local church, which demands concentration and close cooperation with a small team, and I tutor a neighbour's son in maths twice a week ahead of his GCSEs. Neither is connected to my subject, but both require patience and steady commitment over time, which I expect postgraduate research will also need.

In a master's programme I hope to study sovereignty, treaty relationships and the restoration that followed termination, including the Menominee Restoration Act of 1973. I am particularly keen to understand how Indigenous scholars frame their own research questions and what accountability to communities means in practice. I would bring careful archival habits, a reliable work ethic and a willingness to listen before drawing conclusions. I want to learn how to do this work responsibly, and I believe structured postgraduate study is the right way to do it.