This is a partial list of presenters. The list will be updated as we receive additional biographical information.
Kevin Bruyneel received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the New School for Social Research in 2001, and has been at Babson College since the Fall 2001. He teaches and writes about American Politics and Political Theory. His book, The Third Space of Sovereignty: The Postcolonial Politics of U.S.-Indigenous Relations came out in Fall 2007, published by the University of Minnesota Press, Indigenous Americas Series. For his next project, Bruyneel is looking to explore questions of race, gender and national memory in the United States, Canada, and Australia.
Treothe Bullock is an experienced glaciologist and ecologist who currently works as a science educator, writer and photographer. His blog, Tree Oathe, features writing and photography from a Bioregional Cascadian perspective. He sits on the boards of Friends of Celilo Falls and The Celilo Falls Restoration Fund – working toward restoration of Cascadia’s historic ecological/spiritual/cultural center – Celilo Falls.
Olivia Chilcote (Luiseno) is a PhD student in the Department of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley where she also serves as Chair of the American Indian Graduate Student Association. Her research centers Native identity and its interconnection with federal Indian law and policy. Specifically, she interrogates the Federal Acknowledgment Process and the ways in which non-federally acknowledged tribes and tribal members in California work through and against their “non-sovereign” status to assert their Native identities.
Paul Cienfuegos is a regional leader in the Community Rights movement, which works to dismantle corporate constitutional so-called “rights” and assert the people’s inherent right to self-government. He has been leading workshops, giving public talks, and organizing local communities since 1995 when he founded Democracy Unlimited in northern California. Since 2011, he has lived in Portland, Oregon, where he co-founded CommunityRightsPDX.org, and is helping to establish the Oregon Community Rights Network which launched in 2013. His talks have been broadcast nationally on ‘Alternative Radio’. More info can be found at PaulCienfuegos.com
Danielle Delaney is a PhD candidate in the Political Science Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research explores on how and why indigenous communities deploy the discourse of indigeneity when making political claims. Her work focuses on Alaska Natives and the Small Peoples of the North in Russia. Before returning to graduate school she was the Legislative Director of the National Council of Urban Indian Health and a technical adviser to the Tribal Technical Advisory Group to the Centers of Medicaid and Medicare. She received her JD from Georgetown University Law Center with a certificate in legislative advocacy.
Matthew Dennis is Professor of History and Environmental Studies. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley and has taught at Oregon since 1988. His research interests and teaching are diverse. He has written on colonial America and the early national United States, the history of American Indians, American colonialism, nationalism, and identity, the American landscape and environment, and the history of death, mortal remains, and public memory. His books include Seneca Possessed: Indians, Witchcraft, and Power in the Early American Republic (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010) and Cultivating a Landscape of Peace: Iroquois-European Encounters in Seventeenth-Century America (Cornell University Press, 1993).
Grace L. Dillon (Anishinaabe) is an Associate Professor in the Indigenous Nations Studies Program and Affiliated faculty in English at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon, where she teaches a range of courses including First Nations Peoples and Indigenous studies, Indigenous Futurisms, science fiction and speculative literature, Indigenous cinema, Indigenous New Media, and others. She is the editor of Walking the Clouds: An Anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction (University of Arizona Press, 2012) and Hive of Dreams: Contemporary Science Fiction from the Pacific Northwest (Oregon State University Press, 2003). Her work appears in diverse science fiction collections such as Orbiting Ray Bradbury’s Mars (2013) and multiple academic journals. Currently, she is writing Seeding the Stars, a monograph on Indigenous Futurisms.
Rebecca J. Dobkins is Professor of Anthropology at Willamette University. She joined the Willamette faculty in 1996, after working as a researcher at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History. Her Interests include museum studies, Native American contemporary and traditional arts, Maori (New Zealand) arts, and the indigenous peoples, human rights, and the environment. As a curator at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Dobkins has organized exhibitions of Native American art that have toured nationally and internationally. Dobkins is the faculty supervisor for the Chemawa Indian School-Willamette University Partnership Program, a collaborative community service learning project.
Qwo-Li Driskill received a PhD in Rhetoric & Writing (Cultural Rhetorics Concentration) at Michigan State University, and is currently an assistant professor of Queer Studies in the Women Studies Program at Oregon State University teaching both graduate and undergraduate courses. My research focuses on Queer and Two-Spirit Indigenous politics and identities, particularly Cherokee Queer/Two-Spirit people and memories. My research areas include Cherokee performance rhetorics, Native Two-Spirit/Queer Studies, critical ethnic studies, historiography, oral history performance, Native language restoration, healing historical trauma, radical pedagogies, and Red-Black Studies.
Janique Dubois is an Assistant Professor in Political Science at Brock University. Her research focuses on contemporary debates about minority rights through community-based research with Indigenous and francophone communities in Canada.
Linda Fuller is Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and Sociology at the University of Oregon. This proposal is based on research for a book concerning the relationship between consumers of luxury products and those who produce them, most of whom have been Indigenous peoples. The book spans about five centuries and contains empirical material from every continent. At its heart is a case study of the dene suliné (Chipewyan) people, who have produced fine furs for the global luxury trade for over three centuries and whose sub-Arctic homelands are now within the boundaries of the Canadian nation state. The volume is currently being reviewed at a university press.
Rosemary Georgeson is the Aboriginal Community Director for urban ink productions. She has been with urban ink since its beginning in 2001. She has worked with Marie Clements on such projects as “The DTES women’s writing group”. This group has created 2 books “No Supper Tonite, Scapes of the Downtown Eastside”, “Rituals of Rock” and 1 play, “Rare Earth Arias”. In 2004 the stories of women in the dying fishing industry were brought to life in “Women in Fish”. Rosemary worked as community liason on Galiano Island, leading talking circles with the elders of that community. Rosemary was also the co-writer of the “Shadow’s Project” with Savannah Walling of Vancouver Moving Theatre. Rosemary is a 51 year old First Nations woman from Galiano Island. Her family is one of the oldest family’s in the Gulf Islands.
Jessica Hallenbeck is a PHD candidate in the Department of Geography at the University of British Columbia. Her research explores Indigenous feminist media production in relation to settler colonial state attempts at constraining Indigenous political and cultural action. Jessica has worked with urban ink on several video-based projects and is also a filmmaker, focusing on multimedia training, youth engagement, and digital storytelling.
Kevin Hatfield is an Adjunct Assistant Professor with the Department of History and affiliated faculty with the Robert D. Clark Honors College at the University of Oregon. He specializes in the history of the American West, environment, and immigration, with a particular emphasis on the intersections of race/ethnicity, property, and community. Since 1998, Kevin’s research and scholarship has embodied a collaboration with the Biskaian Basque community of eastern Oregon, Western Idaho, and northern Nevada. Kevin has served on the advisory board of the International Basque Studies Consortium, and continues to work closely with the Basque community to collect oral histories and develop a documentary film and possibly feature film inspired by his research with the working title of Bedarra (Grass). A dramatic reading of the screenplay, authored by director, writer, and founder of the Idaho Shakespeare Festival (ISF), Doug Copsey, was performed by ISF actors and local Basque community members in September 2011 at the Basque Cultural Center in Boise, Idaho.
Alexander Keller Hirsch joined the Department of Political Science at the University of Alaska in 2012. He holds a BA in Social Thought and Political Economy from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and a PhD in Politics from the University of California, Santa Cruz. He studies moral conflicts generated out of contestations over the meaning of public pain. He is especially interested in the “repertoires of resilience” that political communities living in the shadow of violence and catastrophe invent for themselves, creative modes of staying power that help such communities respond to and cope with a condition of shared precarity. Currently, Dr. Hirsch is editing a volume of essays on the important 19th century Native American public intellectual and activist, William Apess. He is also at work on a book that explores what clues tragic art offers contemporary democratic theories of responsibility and survivance.
Dawn Hoogeveen is a human geographer that writes about mineral extraction and Indigenous resource sovereignty. Her interests are in settler colonialism, environmental politics, Indigenous law and the coloniality of resource regulation. She is a settler and grew up on the traditional territory of the Anishinaabe in Peterborough, Ontario. Dawn currently resides on Coast Salish territory in Vancouver, where she is a PhD candidate at the University of British Columbia.
Michelle M. Jacob (Yakama) is an associate professor of ethnic studies and affiliated faculty in sociology at the University of San Diego. She is also the founding director of the Center for Native Health and Culture at Heritage University on the Yakama Reservation.
Myra Johnson-Orange is a tribal elder of the Northern Paiute, Warm Springs Reservation. She is the great-great granddaughter of the Northern Paiute spiritual leader the “Dreamer Oytes” and a descendant of the Wa-ta-ti-ka’a (seed eater) band of the Northern Paiute and the Sahaptin people. Myra formerly served as the Director of the Warm Springs Culture and Heritage Department, and is recognized widely for her indefatigable efforts to preserve and teach tribal culture, Native languages, and traditional knowledge and practices. Myra enjoys teaching classes on traditional basketry and other crafts, and speaking with students of all ages in public schools about Native American history and culture. Myra hosted the class at the Warm Springs Museum during the field research trip and traveled to Eugene to speak with the class. Myra continues to serve as primary source of knowledge and contact with the Northern Paiute and the Warm Springs Culture and Heritage Department to assist students with their research.
Matthew J. Kelly is a partner in the Washington, D.C. offices of Fredericks, Peebles and Morgan LLP, a national law firm practicing exclusively in the area of Federal Indian Law. (The views expressed are entirely his own.) He is a graduate of Columbia University (B.A. Hons.), the University of Chicago (A.M.; former doctoral candidate) and Harvard Law School (J.D. Hons.). Before returning to legal practice, his doctoral research focused on the administrative history of federal-tribal relations, and the ideological underpinnings of the historiographical phenomenon of the Invisible Indian. He has published and presented academic papers on this research. His primary interest continues to be the practical underpinnings of normative ideologies and their political consequences.
Kū Kahakalau is a native Hawaiian educator, researcher, song-writer, and expert in Hawaiian language, history and culture and founder of Ku-A-Kanaka Indigenous Institute for Language and Culture. Over the past two decades, Dr. Kahakalau has spearheaded the design of culturally-driven, family-oriented, community-based education programs. These include a bi-lingual early childhood program, Hawaii’s first fully accredited K-12 Hawaiian-focused public charter school, Hawaii’s first community-based Indigenous Institution for Higher Learning and Indigenous Teacher Licensing Program, and an intergenerational, place-based culture and language immersion program. In August 2012, Dr. Kahakalau joined the Institute for Native Pacific Education and Culture (INPEACE) to create, over the next three years, a virtual, intergenerational Hawaiian language program. Among other work, Dr. Kahakalau has chaired the research committee of the Center for World Indigenous Studies, where she has been a board member since 2000.
Fiona MacDonald is an assistant professor of political studies at the University of the Fraser Valley . She is interested in multiculturalism and citizenship; democratic theory; Indigenous politics and feminist political theory. She is working on a book manuscript for UBC Press on Democratic Multinationalism: Reimagining State-Indigenous Relations in Canada. Future research plans include looking at how issue framing can be used to garner political will on basic human needs such as clean water for Indigenous peoples.
Johnny Mack is Toquaht, of the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council. He was raised on an Indian Reserve in Nuu-chah-nulth territory, off the West Coast of Vancouver Island. He recently received a PhD from the University of Victoria (Faculty of Law) focusing on Indigenous legal traditions, Indigenous constitutionalism, subjectivity, critical theory, postcolonial theory and legal pluralism. His doctoral research assessed how the Aboriginal rights and title framework and contemporary treaty negotiations in Canada carry forward the momentum of earlier colonial policies by continuing to dispossess indigenous peoples of their land base and facilitating their reintegrating into the land as liberal democratic Canadians. His LLM thesis, submitted to the Faculty of Law at the University of Victoria in 2009 titled “Thickening Totems and Thinning Imperialism,” provided a critical analysis of the Maa-nulth Treaty Agreement (2007) as a historic and profoundly imperial moment in the history of the Nuu-chah-nulth people.
Cindy Marchand-Cecil descends from French-Canadian First Peoples (Metis) on her father’s side and German, Welsh and Swiss people on her mother’s side. She graduated from the Reservation-Based, Community Determined program in 2002, and received her MSW from the University of Washington. She is presently working on her doctoral degree in Social Work and Research at Portland State University, where she is studying the impact of federally-funded housing in Native communities. She has previously been the Director of a nonprofit organization for 27 years, and she has taught in the Reservation-Based Program since 2004, and became the Program Director in 2013.
Theresa May is Associate Professor of Theatre Arts at the University of Oregon. She has published widely about the intersections of ecology, cultural and indigenous studies, and performance studies, including “Grotowski’s Deep Ecology” in Performing Nature, and “Beyond Bambi: Towards a Dangerous Ecocriticism in Theatre Studies” in a special issue of Theatre Topics on Performance and Ecology. Her community-based play Salmon is Everything, published with accompanying essays by Tribal collaborators, is forthcoming from Oregon State University Press. She co-founded Earth Matters on Stage (EMOS), an international ecodrama contest and symposium on performance and ecology and served as producing director for EMOS in 2004 and 2009.
Debra Merskin is Associate Professor of Media Studies in the School of Journalism & Communication at the University of Oregon. Her publications focus on an ethics of representation of humans and other beings. In particular, her work critiques stereotypes of Native Americans in mainstream American visual culture. Publications include “The S-Word: The Squaw Stereotype in Popular Culture,” “Winnebagos, Cherokees, Apaches, & Dakotas: Persistence of stereotype of American Indians in American Advertising Brands,” and a book, Media, Minorities, and Meaning: A Critical Introduction (Peter Lang, 2010).
Angie Morrill (Modoc/Klamath) is a Ph.D. candidate in ethnic studies at University of California, San Diego currently working at the University of Oregon as Coordinator of Native American Recruitment. Her dissertation, “Native Futures: Reclaiming the Native Mother” explores the liberatory possibilities of the figure of the native mother.
Dwight Newman is Professor of Law & Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Rights in Constitutional and International Law at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada. His research is focused generally on constitutional and international law but particularly on Indigenous rights, especially the complex balances and reconciliations between natural resource development and Indigenous rights. He has published over fifty journal articles or book chapters as well as seven books, including a leading book on Canada’s ‘duty to consult’doctrine, a co-authored general treatise on Canadian constitutional law, and a treatise on natural resource jurisdiction in Canada that expands the question of natural resource jurisdiction beyond traditional federalism issues to include consideration of Indigenous rights. His recent writing has been looking at issues related to consultation and natural resource development in a more international context, and he is currently working on a project on legal structures for Indigenous economic development.
Kari Marie Norgaard is Associate Professor of Sociology and Environmental Studies at University of Oregon. Her research on climate denial, tribal environmental justice and gender and risk has been published in Sociological Forum, Gender and Society, Sociological Inquiry, Organization and Environment, Rural Sociology, Race, Gender & Class, and other journals, as well as by the World Bank. Her research has also been featured in The Washington Post, National Geographic, High Country News, and on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered.” Her first book “Living in Denial: Climate Change, Emotions and Everyday Life” was published by MIT Press in 2011. Norgaard is recipient of the Pacific Sociological Association’s Distinguished Practice Award for 2005.
Jean O’Hara earned a PhD in Theatre and Performance Studies at York University and currently teaches at Humboldt State University. The primarily focus of her work is devised ensemble based theatre that addresses socio-political issues. She has been a collaborator with Klamath Theatre Project, Native Earth Performing Arts, Centre for Indigenous Theatre, and the Alianait Festival. Jean is the editor for newly published anthology, Two Spirit Acts: Queer Indigenous Performances. She has been directing and teaching theatre for past fifteen years and her research interests include Indigenous theatre and representation, and queer performance.
Jennifer R. O’Neal is the University Historian and Archivist at the University of Oregon Special Collections and Archives, where she manages the University Archives collections, oversees the department’s instruction program, and serves as an advisor on tribal community projects. She holds a Masters in Library Science from the University of Arizona, as part of the Knowledge River program, a Masters in History from Utah State University, and is currently completing a PhD in History from Georgetown University. Previously, she served as the Head Archivist for the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian Archive Center. She has held prior archival positions at the U.S. Department of State, Princeton University, University of Arizona, and Utah State University. In 2006 she participated in drafting the best practices for the respectful care and use of Native American archival materials, which produced the Protocols for Native American Archival Materials. She is member of The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde in Oregon.
Surya Parekh is currently the Alain Locke Postdoctoral Fellow at Penn State, a postdoc devoted to the Philosophy of Race. He received my PhD in 2013 from the History of Consciousness program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His main areas of interest are the philosophy of race, indigenous studies, and feminist philosophy.
Celeste Pedri-Spade is Anishinabekwe from the Nizaatiikoong (Lac Des Mille Lacs) First Nation and a member of the mukwa (bear) clan. She embraces many roles and the responsibilities including mother, wife, daughter, granddaughter, niece, community member, artist, activist, and PhD student. Her research interests are vast; yet they are all rooted in her own culture, history and lived experience. She is interested in visual anthropology, decolonization, photography, Indigenous performance, creative indigenous methodologies, and life story. Celeste is the recipient of a number of academic awards and has exhibited artwork, most recently, at the Bury My Art at Wounded Knee Exhibit in Portland Oregon (Dec. 2013). She is also a dancer, hand drum carrier, and recognized regalia maker in her community.
Cornel Pewewardy (Comanche/Kiowa) is Professor and Director of the Indigenous Nations Studies Program at Portland State University, where he also is PI of the American Indian Urban Teacher Program. He designed and teaches the course Culturally Responsive Teaching for American Indian/Alaska Native Students. Formerly an elementary teacher and principal, he has consulted with urban school districts and reservation schools across the USA. Prior to coming to PSU, he was on faculty at the University of Kansas, and was the first Dean of Academic Instruction at the Comanche Nation College. Professor Pewewardy’s research explores Native American mascots in schools, access and retention of American Indian students in higher education, Indigenous epistemologies and pedagogies, culturally responsive teaching praxis, critical multicultural education, Indigenous urban and reservation-based teacher education, tribal college partnerships and collaborations with mainstream universities, Indigenous early college high schools, tribal identity (de)construction, Indigenous decolonization and resurgence, and ethnomusicology (digitizing unrecorded tribal songs of the Southern Plains).
Scott L. Pratt is author of two books, Logic: Inquiry, Argument and Order (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010) and Native Pragmatism: Rethinking the Roots of American Philosophy (Indiana University Press, 2002) and coauthor of American Philosophy from Wounded Knee to 9/11 (Continuum, forthcoming). He has also co-edited four volumes including American Philosophies: An Anthology (Blackwell, 2002) and Royce’s Race Questions, Provincialism and Other American Problems, Expanded Edition, (Fordham University Press, 2009). He has published articles on the philosophy of pluralism, Dewey’s theory of inquiry, Josiah Royce’s logic, and on the intersection of American philosophy and the philosophies of indigenous North American peoples.
Jan Raether is a third year geography major in Robert D. Clark Honors College at the University of Oregon. As a part of Dr. Kevin Hatfield’s and Jennifer O’Neal’s course on Race and Ethnicity in the American West, Jan was able to attend the field research trip in Central Oregon. The opportunity to meet with members of the Warm Springs and Burns Paiute reservations significantly enhanced Jan’s research regarding the effects of infrastructure on colonial conquest. In addition to the course on race and ethnicity, Jan’s academic interests include both historical and political geography, as well as human interactions with space and the environment.
Jeane Riley is a graduate student in the Master of Social Work program at the University of British Columbia. She previously attended Native Education College, where she received her certificate in Family and Community Counseling. She takes part in the Elders Program at the Vancouver Aboriginal Friendship Centre, in addition to working at the Healing Spirit Lodge, where she is a facilitator and support worker in the Breaking Ground Employment Program. She hopes to continue studying mental health issues in society and work within Aboriginal communities in the Pacific Northwest.
Vince Rinehard is editor and author for the blog Lingit Latseen, which seeks to carry out the principles of the Tlingit warrior code, and is dedicated to restoring a vibrant and independent Tlingit nation. He is also Senior Editor at Attack the System, an online network dedicated to resisting imperialism, statism, and other forms of power. He is a Tlingit of the Raven moiety, born and raised in Southeast Alaska, as well as half Taos Pueblo Indian.
Rachel Sayet currently works at the Mohegan Tribe as a Library Assistant, and is also a Fellow at Yale University, working on the Yale Indian Papers Project. Rachel received her Master’s degree in anthropology from Harvard University in May of 2012, with minors in Museum Studies and Business Communication. While at Harvard she also had much involvement with exhibits and research at the Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology. She has written extensively on various topics of Native American life, such as stories, foodways, and sovereignty, and travelled to many conferences throughout the world in order to educate people about Native Americans in New England. Her most recent presentations were at the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association Conference in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan and the Dublin Seminar’s “Foodways of the Northeast II: A Second Helping” Symposium at Historic Deerfield, Massachusetts.
Gordon Sayre is Professor of English at the University of Oregon. He is a specialist in colonial and Early American Literature from the sixteenth through early nineteenth centuries. He has particular interest in French colonial history and literature, in the exploration and cartography of North America, in Native American literature and ethnohistory, and in natural history and eco-criticism. Among other works, he is the author of The Indian Chief as Tragic Hero: Native Resistance and the Literatures of America, from Moctezuma to Tecumseh (2005) and “Les Sauvages Américains:” Representations of Native Americans in French and English Colonial Literature (1997), and editor of American Captivity Narratives: An Anthology (2000).
Lindsey Schneider is a Ph.D. Candidate in Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Riverside. Her dissertation, “Dammed by the State: Indian fishing and the geographies of settler colonialism,” interrogates the connections between nature, race, and property, and explores Indian food production in the Columbia River Basin as a generative praxis that contests the genocidal logics of settler colonialism. She received her M.A. in Ethnic Studies from the University of California, Riverside, and her Bachelor’s degree from Willamette University.
Laura Seelau graduated from the University of Arizona with degrees in Law (JD) and Latin American Studies (MA). She has experience working for the United Nations on projects related to indigenous peoples. Specifically, she studied under and worked for James Anaya, the Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of Indigenous Peoples. Laura is an expert on international law and has presented on the topic in both English and Spanish on numerous occasions.
Ryan Seelau is a senior research at the Native Nations Institute (NNI), housed in the University of Arizona’s Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy. His current work involves scholarly research on Native American sovereign immunity; comparative research on Native nation building in the U.S. and Latin America (with special emphasis on Chile); and also includes a substantial amount of work on the development of online course curricula focusing on Native governance and economic development issues. Ryan holds a JD from the University of Iowa and has two advanced law degrees from the University of Arizona’s Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy program at the Rogers College of Law. In addition to working for NNI, Ryan is also the co-founder of the Project for Indigenous Self-Determination (www.projectisd.org).
Judy BlueHorse Skelton (Nez Perce/Cherokee) is an Indigenous Nations Studies faculty member at Portland State University. She was formerly a Student Support Specialist with Portland Public School’s Title VII Indian Education program, creating curriculum and leading cultural activities focusing on the traditional and contemporary uses of native plants for food, medicine, ceremony and developing healthy lifeways. Judy is a member of the American Indian Science & Engineering Society, and serves as co-chair on the Native American Community Advisory board. For the past several years she has written about Native American culture and health for the state’s largest newspaper, The Oregonian.
Barbara Leigh Smith is an emeritus faculty member and former Academic Dean and Provost at The Evergreen State College. She received her MA and PhD from the University of Oregon in political science. Major academic work includes books and articles on learning communities, collaborative learning, and progressive education. Barbara has also written a number of Native Case Studies. She co-founded and directs the Enduring Legacies project, funded by the Lumina Foundation, the Gates Foundation, NSF and various tribes. The Enduring Legacies project provides faculty workshops on teaching with cases and produces original native case studies for higher education available online at http://nativecases.evergreen.edu. The collection includes more than 90 cases along with detailed teaching notes. The cases are interdisciplinary. They are being used at more than 80 colleges and universities.
Simone Smith is a second year Business Administration major in the Robert D. Clark Honors College at the University of Oregon. In the fall she was a student in Kevin Hatfield’s and Jennifer O’Neal’s Honors College Colloquium class on Race and Ethnicity in the American West. While in the class, Simone was able to participate in a conference call with Wilson Wewa of Warm Springs, and was able to interact with community members Myra Johnson-Orange and Valerie Switzler to add oral histories to her research paper.
Linda Moon Stumpff (San Carlos Apache) is faculty member and co-founder of the Tribal Governance Master of Public Administration at The Evergreen State College,Faculty in the Master of Environmental Studies Program at The Evergreen State College. She received her PhD from the University of Southern California. Major academic work includes co-founding the Enduring Legacies project, funded by the Lumina Foundation and NSF, a collection of original native case studies for higher education available online. Current interests included global indigenous issues, particularly in relation to sacred sites and protected areas and work on a book on native case studies.
Aurolyn Stwyer is a member of the Warm Springs and Wasco tribes. She is a traditional food gatherer for the longhouse. She has an MBA with the University of Minnesota and a master’s degree in human and organizational systems with the Fielding Graduate University, her Ph.D studies has a focus on the Plateau heritage rites of passage ceremonies. Her board memberships include the Museum at Warm Springs, Friends of Celilo, and ONABEN. Aurolyn is the owner of Red Skye Trading Post and Pawn Store at Warm Springs, Oregon.
Janne Underriner is the director of the Northwest Indian Language Institute. She has been active with language preservation issues in the Northwest since 1996 when she began working with Elders in the Klamath Tribes’ language project developing curriculum and teaching materials for their community and schools. She co-founded the Northwest Indian Language Institute (NILI) in 1997. Underriner assists the tribes in developing language programs and writing curriculum, assessment and teaching materials. She worked with the Tribes to develop the NW Indian Language Benchmarks in 2000. She is a grant writer of language and educational projects for the Tribes and for NILI. Underriner is a consultant to Oregon’s Department of Education. Her languages of research are Klamath, Tolowa and Chinuk Wawa.
Andrew Uzendoski is an English graduate student working on his dissertation proposal at the University of Texas at Austin. His current project focuses on genre fiction and the literary legacy of quincentennial novels written by Native American and Mexican American authors—novels written in the early 1990’s in anticipation or in response to the Columbian quincentennial. He is particularly interested in how these authors employ genres, such as science fiction, romance and detective novels, in order to both critique colonial histories and to conceptualize decolonial projects and movements. Currently he is teaching Native American literature at UT.
Jyl M. Wheaton-Abraham is a member of the Kootenai Tribe of Idaho. She is currently a graduate student in Applied Anthropology, attending Oregon State University. As a Native American, her work focuses on issues of representation, social justice, and environmental issues important to indigenous communities worldwide.
Kyle Powys Whyte is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Michigan State University and affiliated faculty for Peace and Justice Studies, Environmental Science and Policy, the Center for Regional Food Systems, Animal Studies and American Indian Studies. He is an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation in Shawnee, Oklahoma. Dr. Whyte writes on environmental justice, the philosophy of technology and American Indian philosophy. His most recent research addresses moral and political issues concerning climate change impacts on Indigenous peoples. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and Spencer Foundation. He is a member of the Michigan Environmental Justice Coalition and organizer for the annual “Everybody Eats: Cultivating Food Democracy” conference in Lansing, Michigan