Faculty and Guest Speakers
(in order of appearance)
Dr. Stephanie Wood, is a historian of indigenous experiences under colonization (with a doctoral field in the U.S. West), the Principal Investigator with the Honoring Tribal Legacies: An Epic Journey of Healing digital collections, a former History professor, and now a research associate at the University of Oregon. She has directed five previous NEH Summer Institutes for school teachers, one in Oregon and four in Mexico. She is also the recipient of multiple NEH research grants for the creation of digital collections.
Tom Smith is an Education Specialist for the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail (National Park Service), the NPS liaison to the Honoring Tribal Legacies project, and a former school teacher. He began his career teaching elementary school in Colorado, while serving as a seasonal Park Ranger at Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument on the Crow Reservation in Montana. For the next few years, he built strong relationships between the National Park Service, respected elders, and the local education institutions on or near the reservation. Tom brings a wealth of knowledge about the Trail, tribal histories, and educational technique to our journey.
Erik Holland, a historian-archaeologist and Educational Curator at the North Dakota Heritage Center (NDHC) and State Museum, was the Program Director for an NEH Landmarks workshop at Fort Snelling in 2006, so he is very knowledgeable and experienced not only about the tribal cultures and their histories of North Dakota, but he collaborates a great deal with groups of teachers. Erik will join us on the Trail in Montana, probably camping in his tipi along the way, and he will be our guide in North Dakota and when we have our culminating seminar in Bismarck. You will be thrilled with the resources in the Innovation Gallery at the NDHC and his deep knowledge of them. He is also arranging for us to get “behind the scenes” at the museum.
Ron Lancaster, is serving currently as a Master Teacher for the Summer Institute, but for most of his professional career Ron was a social studies teacher in Oregon. He also taught International Baccalaureate history courses for the Eugene International High School. After he retired, he taught a Social Studies Methods course at the University of Oregon for four years, and for two summers a curriculum design course at Pacific University. But, he writes, “the most stimulating experience of my retirement was getting to participate in several NEH Institutes on Mesoamerican cultures and their histories in Oaxaca as the master teacher. It is with genuine enthusiasm that I look forward to this summer’s institute!”
Dr. Shane Doyle (Apsáalooke, or Crow), a Native American Studies and Education faculty member at Montana State University, Bozeman, MT, is a specialist in the cultural geography of the Northern Plains and K-12 curriculum design.He is the founder of Native Nexus, an educational and cultural consulting group that works with Montana schools to implement the state’s Indian Education for All law. He will take us through the Crow Agency (Reservation), share his tribe’s history, and help explain the historical significance of sites in the area around Billings from his tribe’s point of view. We also hope he will give us a lesson in Plains Indian sign language.
Dr. Laura Barraclough holds a named professorship in American Studies at Yale University. She has a regional focus on the U.S. West and she researches the cultural politics of land use, settler colonialism, and race (especially “whiteness”). Prof. Barraclough is interested in ethnic studies and the geographies of social movements. She will speak to us (coming at her own expense) about how national historic trails shape the meta-narrative in the construction of nationhood and how groups are pushing back for a more balanced history.
Dr. C. Adrian Heidenreich is a Professor Emeritus of 
anthropology and Native American Studies at MSU-Billings. It was his research on Ledger Drawings that led to the important donation of the Barstow Collection now held in Special Collections in the library on campus. Here is a photo of Prof. Heidenreich holding one of the drawings/paintings. Here is an article about Professor Heidenreich’s experience with the conflict between Christianity and his own traditional faith. An adopted Apsáalooke, he was given the name Dúxxila-dée-ítche (Goes to War in a Good Way) to recognize his cultural advocacy and diplomacy. Heidenreich is author of the book, Smoke Signals in Crow (Apsáalooke) Country: Beyond the Capture of Horses from the Lewis and Clark Expedition (2006); he also wrote “The Crow Indian Delegation to Washington, D. C., in 1880,” “Background and Interpretation of Crow and Gros Ventre Ledger Art Done at Crow Agency, Montana Between 1879 and 1897; Recovery and Preservation of the Barstow Collection; and Listing of Works” in the Catalog of the Charles H. Barstow Collection (Yellowstone Art Center).
Ralph Saunders is a cartographer and passionate about researching the history of the Lewis and Clark expedition, particularly its geographic dimensions. He has especially known for his research mapping the Beartooth Mountains and he figured out where a part of the Corps of Discovery crossed the Yellowstone River near what is now Billings, MT. Here’s a video of him speaking of that crossing, which is now called “Clark’s Crossing,” even if Clark himself did not go across. He ordered the crossing to take place, and the crossing involved taking 26 horses across. We’ll hear about the harrowing experience in Saunders’ presentation.
Rose Williamson (Apsáalooke, or Crow) will interpret Little Bighorn Battlefield and guide us to the powwow at Lodge Grass, two sites of historical and spiritual significance that we will visit in Montana. Here’s an article about her work as a guide. She has her own company, Indian Battle Tours, which has a page on Facebook. You will find videos of Rose guiding groups on YouTube, such as this one. Here is a photo from 2017 about Williamson, who is well known as a guide to Little Bighorn. On the right: Williamson’s photo by Chris Lawson.
Conrad Fisher (Northern Cheyenne)
is the Vice President of the Northern Cheyenne Tribal Council. He also served in his tribe’s Historic Preservation Office for ten years (2004–2014), a position that involved managing tribal historic and traditional cultural properties and resources on ancestral lands, which occupy parts of nine states. He was sworn in for a four-year term as Vice President in 2016. His office is in Lame Deer, which is near to Deer Medicine Rocks. He will be our guide in visiting that sacred and historic site. Here you can hear Mr. Fisher sing the Lame Deer version of his tribe’s flag song.
Dr. Janine Pease (Apsáalooke) is a member of the LBHC Faculty and works part-time in institutional planning and accreditation. Previously she served as the Cabinet Head for Education for the Black Eagle Administration of the Crow Nation. Dr. Pease holds bachelor’s degrees in sociology and anthropology (1970) from Central Washington University and advanced degrees in adult and higher education, M. Ed 1987 & D. Ed 1994 from Montana State University – Bozeman. Her professional career in adult and higher education began in 1971 in Washington State. Since then, Janine has held various administrative and faculty positions at Big Bend Community College, Navajo Community College, Eastern Montana College, Little Big Horn College, Rocky Mountain College, and Fort Peck Community College. In Montana, she served on the Human Rights Commission, the Districting and Apportionment Commission, and the Board of Regents of the University System. Dr. Pease has been active in American Indian voter organization and was the lead plaintiff in Windy Boy v. Big Horn County (1983-86). Janine is an enrolled Crow Indian and is Hidatsa, English, and German. She has two children, six grandchildren, and one great-grandchild, and resides in Hardin MT.
Tim Bernardis has been serving as the founding Library Director at Little Big Horn College (LBHC) since 1985. He also founded the LBHC Archives in 1986. He is currently working on establishing the Little Big Horn College High Bird Joseph Medicine Crow Museum of Apsáalooke Culture and History. He has also been an Adjunct Faculty Instructor in Crow Studies and History at LBHC. Professor Bernardis received his M.Ed. in 1987 in Adult and Higher Education from Montana State University Bozeman and two B.A.s in History and in Native American Studies in 1981 from the University of California, Berkeley. He is an author of many articles, including “Battle of the Rosebud” and “Fetterman Fight” in Encyclopedia of the American Indian (1996); author of Crow Social Studies Baleeisbaalichiwee History, a Crow reservation area teacher’s guide to Crow history (1986) for the Bilingual Materials Development Center in Crow Agency; The 1990s, part of Crow entry in the Handbook of North American Indians, v. 13, Plains, Smithsonian Institution, (2001); and (with Frederick E. Hoxie) “Robert Yellowtail” in The New Warriors, Native American Leaders Since 1900 (2001). He is also an adopted member of the Plainfeather family in the Crow (Apsáalooke) Tribe.
Dr. Timothy McCleary (adopted Apsáalooke) has been a professor of history at the Little Big Horn Tribal College for more than 25 years. He has worked with about 20 elders on a project that researches original tribal place names and their meanings. Here is an article about his activities at the college and in the Apsáalooke community. He will share aspects of his tribe’s history and culture with us. Here’s a video in which he speaks about the bands of the Crow that comprise the Apsáalooke nation. And another video where he speaks about the importance of the horse to the Apsáalooke Nation. He is the current archaeologist for the Crow Tribal Historic Preservation Office, and he was once the chief historian at the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument.
Loren Yellow Bird (Arikara) is a sundancer and a pipe carrier with seventeen years’ experience as a historian, educational interpreter, and park ranger. He’s also a Turtle Island Storyteller. He will share his cultural knowledge when we visit Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site, where he currently works, and at the Confluence Center. Loren is an indigenous liaison to the Honoring Tribal Legacies project.
Calvin Grinnell (Mandan/Hidatsa/Arikara, a member of all three affiliated tribes) is also known as Running Elk. He served on the North Dakota State Historical Review Board and the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial State Committee. He is a descendant of the famous Hidatsa chief, Four Bears. He is a registered Turtle Island Storyteller and a historian who works with the tribal college at Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota. He will come to our hotel to speak to us about tribal history and culture. For a glimpse of this speaker, please see the video, Native Homelands along the Lewis and Clark Trail, The Montana Experience, published on line April 7, 2014 (he speaks about 5 1/2 minutes into the video).
Alisha Deegan (Hidatsa/Sahnish) is a Tribal Liaison to the Honoring Tribal Legacies project, but she also works full time as the Acting Chief Interpreter and Site Manager at the Knife River Indian Villages site. Alisha was interviewed by Erik Holland about her role in Story Corps, as she is an advocate of stories and oral tradition, in general. She is a member of the Council for Indigenous Relevancy, Communication, Leadership, and Excellence (CIRCLE). She is also involved with Hands on the Land (HOL), a network of field classrooms stretching across America from Alaska to Florida. HOL is sponsored by Partners in Resource Education, a collaboration of five Federal agencies, a non-profit foundation, schools, and other private sector partners. The point is to educate people about public lands, which comprise about one-third of all land in the United States. Alisha will share her cultural knowledge when we visit that and other sites in the area relating to the origins of the tribes with which she is affiliated.
Dr. Carmelita Lamb (Hispanic/Lipan Band of Apache), is Associate Dean of the school of Education at the University of Mary. She is a former high school science teacher, a tribal college Education department chair, and now an associate dean at the University of Mary. She will assist with curriculum design during our concluding seminar. Like Dr. Doyle, Dr. Lamb is also a curriculum designer with Honoring Tribal Legacies.
Dr. Michael Taylor, Associate Professor of Education at the University of Mary, and a former middle school teacher, will contribute to our concluding seminar in Bismarck, sharing information about how tribes educate their youth in Native histories, with a focus on the Oceti Sakowin Camp schools on the Standing Rock Reservation. Click here for an account of his experiences at Standing Rock. He was a participant-observer relative to the Oceti Sakowin protest camp, near the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), from August 2016 to late February 2017. Tens of thousands of people came to an encampment near the Standing Rock Reservation to protest the installation of an oil pipeline that threatened the environment (and still does).
Ruth Buffalo, is the first Native American Democratic woman elected to the North Dakota State Legislature. She is an enrolled member of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation. When elected, she displaced the man who had sponsored the law the disenfranchised so many indigenous voters. Representative Buffalo is a member of the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition. She will speak to us about issues facing contemporary indigenous women.
Dakota Goodhouse (Hunkpapa Lakota/Yanktonai) is pictured on our banner image on this website, explaining Winter Counts. He has a B.A. in Theology and History from the University of Mary, and he works as an interpreter at the North Dakota Heritage Center. Dakota will participate in our concluding seminar, teaching us about his culture, its history, and both historical and contemporary Winter Counts (which he makes).
Administrative Assistants
Teodoro Reyes-Ramírez and Shuo Xu, both at the University of Oregon, will help the Institute Director by coordinating administrative and financial aspects of the Institute.
This institute is being funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
“Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this web resource do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.”