As an Indigenous/Euro researcher my work is a complicated cartography through identity, claims and rights, and the over-arching elements of identity politics that serve to address the question: How Indigenous identity politics intersect, impact, and revolt against settler-colonial institutions of higher learning. Approaching this research from a grounded theory framework to open possibilities for developing or expanding a theory and praxis for Indigenous futurisms around belonging and identity, is the goal. The examination of the scope and depth of identity politics, historically through modern day, as habituated to restoring and destroying, protecting and disrupting the identities of marginalized, underrepresented Indigenous Americans, becomes the tool and lens to analyse the patterns and impacts of identity politics to define and lead Indigenous peoples into the future. By identifying the nuances and practices of self-determination, ancestral connections, and the role of modern identity politics of Native Indigenous Americans in kinship, community, and social groups, my intention is to bring forward the relationship between Indigenous peoples and identity politics within institutions of higher learning.