There is a widely and deeply held belief on the part of the author's white colleagues that racism is something done by individuals through overt or covert actions against other individuals. Sometimes this belief is tied to one specific characteristic--skin color. Some would believe that they cannot commit racist acts against anyone who looks like them regardless of the identified race of that person. As a clever trick of psychological avoidance, this worldview allows many mainstream faculty to remain comfortably aloof to the infrastructures, the cultural, social, and academic "standards," that contribute to the unseen barriers American Indian colleagues must surmount. In this article, the author describes the cultural and religious barriers of American Indian faculty in the academy. (Contains 34 notes.)