Olivia Chilcote, Ph.D.

Associate Professor - On sabbatical until August 2026
Email: [email protected] | Office: AL-327

Olivia M. Chilcote (Payómkawichum/Luiseño, San Luis Rey Band of Mission Indians) is an Associate Professor of American Indian Studies at San Diego State University. She received her Ph.D. and M.A. in the Department of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley and her B.A. in the Department of Ethnic & Women’s Studies at Cal Poly Pomona. Her research and teaching focus on the areas of interdisciplinary American Indian Studies, California Indian Studies, federal Indian law & policy, American Indian identity, and Indigenous feminisms. 

Professor Chilcote is the author of Unrecognized in California: Federal Acknowledgment and the San Luis Rey Band of Mission Indians (University of Washington Press, 2024). Unrecognized in California examines the distinct crisis of tribal federal recognition in California, the state with the most non-federally recognized tribes in the country. Professor Chilcote's current research undertakes an Indigenous feminist paradigm of historical recovery to challenge the settler colonial visual culture of California Indian elderhood in Southern California during the late nineteenth century. 

Professor Chilcote is a founding member of the California Indian Studies and Scholars Association and is serving a 2024-27 term on the organization’s Council of Leadership. At SDSU, Professor Chilcote is an appointed member of the university’s NAGPRA Oversight Committee and has received Excellence in Service and Outstanding Faculty Awards. She is a first generation college student, the first person in her tribe to receive a Ph.D., and the first California Indian tenured at SDSU.