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Anthropology professor establishes student scholarships with donations to SF State

Dawn-Elissa Fischer creates awards in honor of scholar Marcyliena Morgan, civil rights attorney Walter P. Riley 

Extending an academic family tree to today’s students and future generations, a professor at San Francisco State University has created two scholarships for students.  

With two generous donations to San Francisco State, Anthropology Professor Dawn-Elissa Fischer has established the Marcyliena Morgan Scholarship and the Walter P. Riley Radical Change Scholarship. Both awards are eligible exclusively to SF State students. 

Fischer created the awards to respectively honor Morgan, a Harvard University professor and renowned scholar of hip-hop, and Riley, an Oakland civil rights attorney and activist. Both Morgan and Riley have each fought injustices and opened doors with global impact. 

“Dr. Marcyliena Morgan and Walter Riley are revolutionaries in their own distinct ways,” Fischer said. “Their steadfast efforts have brought about widespread recognition for activists and hip-hop artists as organic intellectuals with integrity.”

With both awards, students will gain opportunities to meet mentors, join professional networks and establish their own. As a faculty member, Fischer says that mentorship is critical to engender success in students, particularly those from underrepresented groups without equitable access to professional networks. She learned the value of networking from mentors like Morgan, but also through her personal academic family tree: Fischer’s parents, grandparents and great-grandparents were all educators. 

“There are so many layers and roles that faculty play in helping students build scholarly community,” Fischer said. “In my family, it comes from a Historically Black College and University tradition, and it recognizes structural factors that often block access for talented individuals to plug into success networks,” Fischer added. “And when that happens, society loses.” 

Marcyliena Morgan Scholarship 

The Marcyliena Morgan Scholarship provides stipends for activities related to student professional development, such as travel, lodging and conference fees. These experiences enhance students’ knowledge, but perhaps even more importantly, also allow them to build their own professional networks.  

At Harvard, Morgan is the Ernest E. Monrad Professor of the Social Sciences, a professor in the Department of African and African American Studies and the executive director of the Hiphop Archive and Research Institute. Her books include “Language, Power and Discourse in African American Culture,” “Speech Communities: Key Topics in Linguistic Anthropology” and “The Real Hiphop: Battling for Knowledge, Power and Respect in LA’s Underground.” 

In December, Fischer was among the invited presenters at a tribute to Morgan at Harvard, alongside other notable mentees in academia. Fischer’s presentation makes note that Morgan’s multigenerational, worldwide impact has reached SF State: Fischer has worked with Morgan at the institute, directing special programs and collections for two decades and — along the way — connecting SF State students with Harvard fellowships. 

 

 

Walter P. Riley Radical Change Scholarship 

The Walter P. Riley Radical Change Scholarship honors students committed to pursuing radical social change through community involvement.  

An activist since high school in the Jim Crow South, Riley attended SF State in the 1960s and became involved in Students for a Democratic Society, Black Students for Open Admissions and the student strike for Black and ethnic studies. His work is centered around labor, education, housing access, anti-apartheid, anti-war, police misconduct, voter registration and cultural issues. He has worked with the Black Panther Party and in grassroots efforts to prevent urban displacement of Black and other working-class communities. Riley’s numerous recognitions include the 2015 Law for the People Award from the National Lawyers Guild. 

Learn more about SF State scholarship opportunities. 

 

 

Marcyliena Morgan stands in front of a wall painted with the text Build. Respect. Represent.

Marcyliena Morgan. Photo by Melissa Blackall/Courtesy of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research.

Walter P. Riley places his right hand over his chest while wearing a suit and a fedora

Walter P. Riley

Student’s documentary helps her family heal from intergenerational trauma

Cecilia Mellieon and her daughter sit outdoors at Fortaleza Indian Ruins, homeland of their ancestors, near the Tohono O’odham Nation’s San Lucy Village outside of Gila Bend, Arizona. Photo from 2001.

Grad student Cecilia Mellieon utilizes visual anthropology, a field of study founded at SF State, to tell stories of urban Native American life 

With a video camera in her hands and empathy in her heart, one San Francisco State University student is focusing her capstone project on a subject many families prefer to avoid: their intergenerational trauma.  

Cecilia Mellieon, a graduate student in Anthropology at San Francisco State, is the director of a documentary titled “He told us the sky is blue.” It traces her family’s trauma to Native American oppression, focusing on the Indian boarding school her father attended in Fort Apache, Arizona.  

“If it hadn’t been for his experience there, he would have never left his family or his village,” said Mellieon, a member of the Tohono O’odham Nation. “He would have never moved to the Bay Area, and so I would not even be here if it wasn’t for him making those decisions to get away from them.” 

The U.S. government established the boarding schools to teach English and trade skills to Native American children. Violent corporal punishment occurred often.  

“The ultimate goal was to have fully assimilated second-generation children — children who were removed from their lands, children who didn’t grow up with their culture or their language or their family members,” Mellieon said. 

In her 55-minute film, Mellieon’s family recalls surviving an abusive household. They share feelings of sadness and regret as they also work to resolve their anger. 

“These are stories that I know too well, because I was there,” Mellieon said. “There are scenes where my brother and my mom are breaking down crying. I was crying with them.” 

Cecilia Mellieon headshot

Born and raised in San Francisco, Mellieon is passionate about telling stories of urban Native American life with nuance and sensitivity. She uses a supportive, collaborative approach that aims to not only create an ethnography, but also a work that will benefit the subjects. 

Her approach is an application of visual anthropology, a field of study that was founded by late SF State faculty members John Adair and John Collier. SF State Anthropology Professor Peter Biella (B.A., ’72; M.A., ’75) was one of Collier’s students, and today he is Mellieon’s adviser. 

Mellieon entered SF State as an undergraduate in 2018 at age 42. She had just completed her associate’s degree from Los Medanos College while her third child had yet to start kindergarten.  

A new Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) extension to near her home in Antioch made the 50-mile commute to SF State feasible, with family help on child care. Now, one of her children, Tatihn Mellieon, also attends SF State, as a Creative Writing major and a student assistant in The Poetry Center. 

“It was the perfect grouping of coincidences that led to me to be able to go to State,” Cecilia Mellieon said. “If I had tried this at any other point in my life, I don’t think I would have had the life experiences. I don’t think I would have had the growth that I needed to be a confident student and be able to feel like I could tackle this.” 

Mellieon premiered “He told us the sky is blue” in November at Los Medanos College. She plans to take it to film festivals and make more anthropological films about big-city Indigenous life. 

Learn more about the Anthropology Department. 

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