Jeff Corntassel (Cherokee Nation), received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Arizona in 1998, and is currently Associate Professor and Graduate Adviser in Indigenous Governance at the University of Victoria. Professor Corntassel’s research and teaching interests include global Indigenous rights and Indigenous political mobilization/self-determination movements.

Jeff’s first book, entitled Forced Federalism: Contemporary Challenges to Indigenous Nationhood (2008, University of Oklahoma Press), examines how Indigenous nations in the U.S. have mobilized politically as they encounter new threats to their governance from state policymakers. Jeff’s next book is a co-edited volume (with Professor Tom Holm) entitled The Power of Peoplehood: Regenerating Indigenous Nations (Forthcoming, University of Texas Press) which brings together native scholars from Canada and U.S to discuss contemporary strategies for revitalizing Indigenous communities. Other works in progress focus on notions of sustainable self-determination, practicing insurgent education, and a comparative critique of state apologies/truth and reconciliation efforts as they impact Indigenous nations in Canada, Australia, Guatemala and Peru.

Ines Hernandez-Avila (Nez Perce, enrolled on the Colville Reservation, Washington, and Tejana) is Professor of Native American Studies as the University of California at Davis, where she served as Chair of the Department of English in 1996-1998 and 2010-2013. Under her leadership, the department submitted a successful proposal to establish an M.A. and Ph.D. program in Native American Studies. This graduate program, officially approved at the UC system wide level in early November 1998, is the first of its kind in the country in its hemispheric perspective.

She one of the six founders of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA). In 2008 she won an American Council of Learned Societies fellowship, sponsored by the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society. This fellowship allowed her to focus on contemplative practice in her teaching as it relates to ancient Nahuatl and other indigenous philosophical traditions, as well contemporary indigenous expressions of personal and collective autonomy in the service of social justice. In 2009 she received the Academic Senate Distinguished Teaching Award at the Graduate and Professional level. She is a member of the National Caucus of the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers, and is active with the Native Traditions in the Americas Group of the American Academy of Religion.  She is currently co-director of a Social Justice Initiative funded by the Mellon Foundation.

Val Napoleon is the Law Foundation Professor of Aboriginal Justice and Governance at the Faculty of Law, University of Victoria. She is from northeast British Columbia (Treaty 8) and a member of Saulteau First Nation. She is also an adopted member of the Gitanyow (Gitksan) House of Luuxhon, Ganada (Frog) Clan. Prior to joining the Faculty of Law at UVIC, she was an associate professor cross appointed with the faculties of Native Studies and Law at the University of Alberta.

She worked as a community activist and consultant in northwestern BC for over 25 years, specializing in health, education, and justice issues. She also worked with a number of regional, provincial, national, and international projects relating to indigenous legal traditions, conflict management, education, and citizenship. Her current research focuses on indigenous legal traditions, indigenous legal theory, indigenous feminism, citizenship, self-determination, and governance. Some of my major initiatives include a proposed JID (joint JD and indigenous law degree) program, establishing the Indigenous law research clinic, and a collaborative national reconciliation and justice with the Indigenous Bar Association, Truth and Reconciliation, and the Ontario Law Foundation.

Daniel Heath Justice is a Colorado-born Canadian citizen of the Cherokee Nation. He received his B.A. from the University of Northern Colorado and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.  Before coming to UBC, he spent ten years as a faculty member in the Department of English at the University of Toronto, where he was also an affiliate of the Aboriginal Studies Program.

Daniel currently holds the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Literature and Expressive Culture. He is the author of Our Fire Survives the Storm: A Cherokee Literary History and numerous essays in the field of Indigenous literary studies, as well as co-editor of a number of critical and creative anthologies and journals, including the award-winning Sovereign Erotics: A Collection of Two-Spirit Literature. His Indigenous epic fantasy novel, The Way of Thorn and Thunder: The Kynship Chronicles, was released in 2011 by the University of New Mexico Press. His current and forthcoming projects include a cultural history of badgers, a new fantasy novel, a critical monograph on kinship in Indigenous writing, and, with co-editor James H. Cox, the Oxford Handbook of Indigenous American Literature.

Brian Klopotek (Choctaw) is an Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of Oregon, where he has just led the successful effort to establish a new minor in Native American Studies, which became available to students this year. He earned a PhD in American Studies from the University of Minnesota in 2004.

His first book, Recognition Odysseys: Indigeneity, Race, and Federal Tribal Recognition Policy in Three Louisiana Indian Communities, was published in 2011 by Duke University Press. Much of his work explores the ways indigenous status and racial status interacts with each other as separate but related vectors shaping Native American experiences. His current book project, Indian on Both Sides, compares constructions of race and indigeneity in the United States and Mexico. He has just completed a co-edited volume with Brenda Child called Indian Subjects: Hemispheric Perspectives on the History of Indigenous Education, to be published in 2013 with SAR Press. The book contains original essays exploring educational histories throughout the Americas and the Pacific, moving toward more hemispheric and global conversations about the variety of indigenous experiences.