UNM Foundation Announces Hitchcock-Kelly Fund for Human and Indigenous Peoples’ Rights

The University of New Mexico Foundation (UNMF) is excited to announce The Hitchcock-Kelly Fund for Human and Indigenous Peoples’ Rights. The fund, which recently was established through a generous donation from Robert K. Hitchcock and Melinda C. Kelly, will provide vital support for collaboration between UNM’s Anthropology and Native American Studies departments for planning programs, activities, events, and student-related research to help advance human rights and Indigenous peoples’ rights.

“Bob and Melinda’s gift provides a rare opportunity for Native American Studies and Anthropology to collaborate and align our teaching, research, and service around Indigenous people’s human rights,” said Tiffany Lee, Ph.D. Chair and Professor of Native American Studies.

One of the priorities for the gift, said Keith Hunley, Ph.D., Chair and Professor of the Department of Anthropology, is to organize and host a conference at UNM that will bring together students, professors, and experts from around the country who study human and Indigenous people’s rights.

“Because we’ve both been committed to Indigenous rights in southern Africa,” said Hitchcock, “we thought it would be good to promote them here. New Mexico is a great place to do these programs, but interdisciplinary programs are hard to bring together and manage.”

“We want Anthropology and Native American Studies to figure out ways to collaborate that will be interesting to them and help both departments,” Kelly added.

Robert Hitchcock, Ph.D., is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Anthropology at UNM. He has done extensive ethnographic and human rights work with southern Africa's San (Bushmen) for nearly five decades. He has also worked with Native American communities in New Mexico and other areas on land rights, tourism, and development issues.

Melinda Kelly worked with Hitchcock in Botswana in 1975 and 1976, where she assisted in research, interviews, report writing, grant accounting, and artifact collecting and analysis. In the past nine years, she has attended numerous anthropological and ecological conferences and has done ethnographic fieldwork in Botswana, Namibia, and South Africa. Currently, she works with faith-based organizations and the Kalahari Peoples Fund on issues involving human and Indigenous peoples’ rights.