The Digital Atlas of Native American Intellectual Traditions (DANAIT) was an IMLS-funded project to create a space for conversation and collaboration, with the goal of developing a framework for sharing, exploring, and visualizing Native-authored library and archival collections. The project brought together Native Studies scholars; Native librarians; tribal historians; representatives from libraries with large Native-authored collections; metadata, digital humanities, and user interface specialists; and technologists to expand and improve culturally appropriate access to Native digital collections and to create collaborative digital humanities scholarship that accurately represents Native American intellectual networks. More information is available in the project abstract and narrative.
Project Partners included Amherst College; The Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums (ATALM); Mukurtu; and the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA).
A note about our title: One of the first topics of discussion at the June 2016 Planning Meeting was the working title for the project. Participants raised concerns about each of the words in the title and it quickly became clear that new language was required. Rather than let the first obstacle hold us back, we set aside the problematic nature of our working title and forged ahead. As we continue to collaborate with a wide range of stakeholders, we expect a new name for this project will emerge; for the time being, we will refer to the project as “DANAIT” or simply “the digital atlas.” Title suggestions are most welcome!
Original Steering Committee:
- Melissa Brodt, Project Director, ATALM
- Lisa Brooks, Associate Professor of English and American Studies, Amherst College
- Marisa Duarte, Assistant Professor of Justice and Sociotechnical Change, Arizona State University
- Susan Feller, President, ATALM
- Michael Kelly, Head of Archives & Special Collections, Amherst College (chair)
- Kelcy Shepherd, Digital Public Library of America
Participant Biographical Information
Dr. Michael Ashley is Director of Technology at the Center for Digital Archaeology (CoDA), a non-profit company affiliated with UC Berkeley that creates and leverages data management technologies for the preservation and sharing of cultural heritage. He is developing Codifi, an innovative mobile solution for turning buried content into discoverable, data-driven stories. Michael is on the Advisory Board of Mukurtu CMS, an open source content management solution for Indigenous communities to share, license and curate their digital heritage. He received his Ph.D. at UC Berkeley in 2004, where he went on as faculty and staff to co-found several initiatives, including the award winning Open Knowledge and the Public Interest (OKAPI), and the Media Vault Program, a digital preservation and access framework for the university’s museums and archives. An archaeological photographer by training, Michael was the Media Team lead for the Çatalhöyük Research Project for 7 years.
Melissa Brodt has been involved with the Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries and Museums (ATALM) since 2006. She currently serves as ATALM’s Project Director. Prior to working with ATALM, Melissa held event and program manager positions at a local environmental non-profit in Oklahoma City. Melissa is a graduate of the University of Central Oklahoma with a bachelor’s in History and Museum Studies.
Lisa Brooks is Associate Professor of English and American Studies at Amherst College and Chair of the Five College Native American and Indigenous Studies Program. She received her Ph.D. in English, with a minor in American Indian Studies, from Cornell University in 2004. Her first book, The Common Pot: The Recovery of Native Space in the Northeast, which reframes the historical and literary landscape of the northeast, won the Media Ecology Association’s Dorothy Lee Award for Outstanding Scholarship in the Ecology of Culture in 2011. Brooks used ArcGIS to create maps of Native Space, foregrounding Indigenous placenames and geographies, which are featured on the The Common Pot website. Although deeply rooted in her Abenaki homeland, Brooks’s work has been widely influential in a global network of scholars. She co-authored the collaborative volume, Reasoning Together: The Native Critics Collective, which was recognized by the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA) as one of the Ten Most Influential Books in Native American and Indigenous Studies of the First Decade of the Twenty-First Century. She also wrote the “Afterword” for American Indian Literary Nationalism. In 2009, Brooks was elected to the inaugural Council of NAISA, and she currently serves on Editorial Boards for Studies in American Indian Literatures and Ethnohistory. In addition to her scholarly work, Brooks serves on the Advisory Board of Gedakina, a non-profit organization focused on indigenous cultural revitalization, educational outreach, and community wellness in New England. As a Whiting fellow, Brooks is completing her current book, entitled The Queen’s Right, the Printer’s Revolt, and the Place of Peace, and an associated website, which places the colonial conflict known as King Philip’s war in Indigenous networks and geographies.
Dr. Margaret M. Bruchac (Abenaki) is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Associate Professor of Cultural Heritage, and Coordinator of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania. She directs two restorative research projects—“On the Wampum Trail” and “The Speck Connection”—that involve broad surveys and close material analyses of Indigenous objects in museum collections, in consultation with Native American and First Nations tribal leaders and museum curators. For breaking news on these projects, see her research blog, “On the Wampum Trail,” and her articles on the Penn Museum Blog, “Beyond the Gallery Walls.” From 2003-2010, Dr. Bruchac served as the Five College Repatriation Research Liaison for Amherst College, Smith College, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. From 2008-2012, she was an Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Coordinator of Native American and Indigenous Studies at the University of Connecticut. At present, Marge is also a Consulting Scholar to the Penn Museum and an Advisor for the American Philosophical Society Museum’s new exhibition, “Gathering Voices: Thomas Jefferson and Native America.” She is the recipient of research fellowships from the School for Advanced Research, Ford Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, and, most recently, a Mellon Fellowship from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation. Dr. Bruchac’s publications include: “Lost and Found: NAGPRA, Scattered Relics and Restorative Methodologies” in Museum Anthropology (2010); Indigenous Archaeologies: A Reader in Decolonization (Left Coast Press 2010); and the forthcoming Consorting With Savages: Indigenous Informants and American Anthropologists (University of Arizona Press).
shash yázhí Charley is a consultant with a background in organizing, training, fundraising, facilitation and program development: all with an emphasis on healing work. For the past twenty-four years shash yázhí’s passion has centered on inter-generational work with a focus on youth and elders. Experience with indigenous communities has also empowered shash yázhí to practice movement work that integrates spirit and connection to the heart in order to strengthen the impact of organizing work. shash yázhí uses the form of holding circles as a base, utilizing tribal healing practices from the Diné (Navajo) reservation where shash yázhí was born and raised. These circles incorporate aspects of native ceremony through the custom of talking circle, use of talking stick, teaching around connecting to Mother Earth, as well as the spiritual practice of letting go through Seasonal Fire Circles (Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter) which encompass traditional reflection around connecting to the transition of the seasons.
Aaron Coburn is a programmer at Amherst College with a particular interest in distributed systems, cloud-based architectures and data modeling. He is actively involved in implementing a desktop virtualization system for the Five Colleges Consortium. He also works closely with the Amherst College Library on a campus-wide digital asset management system.
Christine DeLucia is Assistant Professor of History at Mount Holyoke College, where she specializes in indigenous and colonial histories of North America, particularly in the Northeast/New England. Her first book, The Memory Lands: King Philip’s War and the Place of Violence in the Northeast (forthcoming from Yale University Press) examines the conflict known as King Philip’s War (1675-1678), and how tribal and non-tribal communities have reckoned with this transformative moment and its legacies. Her work has also appeared in the Journal of American History, Studies in American Indian Literatures, Early American Studies, and Common-place. DeLucia has been involved in a number of digital humanities projects, including development of an American Indian Studies Resources portal at Yale, and as organizer of a recent “Digital Futures of Indigenous Studies” initiative at the John Carter Brown Library. She is presently an NEH fellow at the American Antiquarian Society, working on a second project about indigenous communities in the 18th century and afterwards, and how material culture can open up new narratives about Native survivance.
Ann M. Doyle serves as Head of the First Nations House of Learning Xwi7xwa Library at the University of British Columbia, Canada. Ann is of Acadian-Irish heritage with a research interest in Indigenous knowledge organization and intersecting knowledge traditions. She volunteers as a peer reviewer, publishes in the field, recently guest-edited the first Indigenous theme issue, of Cataloging & Classification Quarterly with Dr. Cheryl Metoyer (University of Washington), and loves kayaking the open waters of Gwaii Haanas.
Marisa Elena Duarte is Assistant Professor of Justice and Sociotechnical Change through the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University. She is a member of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, also bearing family ties from the Mexican American community in south Tucson, Arizona. Duarte worked as a professional librarian for years, focusing on access to information and library services for tribal and Spanish speaking communities, before completing a doctorate in 2013 from the University of Washington Information School. While there, she co-founded the Indigenous Information Research Group, a team of Native and Indigenous doctoral researchers investigating problems of information, knowledge, and technology in Native and Indigenous communities. The research efforts of this group contributed to decision-making through such venues as the Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums, the National Congress of American Indians Policy Research Center, the National Indian Child Welfare Association, and the American Indian Library Association. Her book Network Sovereignty: Building the Internet Across Indian Country is forthcoming from the University of Washington Press. She is currently a member of the Human Security Collab at Arizona State University.
Jim Enote is the director of the A:shiwi A:wan Museum and Heritage Center and director of the Colorado Plateau Foundation. He serves on the boards of the Grand Canyon Trust and Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation and is a senior advisor for Mountain Cultures at the Mountain Institute. He is a National Geographic Society Explorer; a New Mexico Community Luminaria; and an E.F. Schumacher Society Fellow. Jim has written in Heritage In the Context of Globalization; Science, Technology, and Human Values; Sacredness as a Means to Conservation; Mapping Our Places; Indigenous People and Sustainable Development; and Redrock Testimony, to name a few. Recent short pieces include: The Museum Collaboration Manifesto, Buyer Beware, What I Tell Boys, and Please Don’t Call Me a Warrior. In 2013 he received the Guardian of Culture and Lifeways Award from the Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums, and in 2010 during the American Anthropological Association’s annual conference Jim was awarded the first Ames Prize for Innovative Museum Anthropology.
Erin Fehr is Yup’ik and a descendant of a CIRI shareholder. She is the archivist at the Sequoyah National Research Center at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, where she has been since 2011. She received her BA in Music from Central Baptist College and her MM in Musicology and Master of Library and Information Studies from the University of Oklahoma. Her research interests include the musical education and performance of Native Americans during and after the boarding school era and the history of American Indian marching bands.
Susan Feller is founding President/CEO of the Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums (ATALM). Susan retired as the Development Officer for the Oklahoma Department of Libraries in 2015 and now devotes full time to tribal initiatives, including broadband connectivity, digital literacy, STEM, Native language preservation, and workforce development. While at the Department of Libraries, Ms. Feller was responsible for all IMLS-funded tribal projects, Oklahoma’s Connecting to Collections statewide initiative, and the Oklahoma Historical Records Advisory Board. As an advocate for cultural sovereignty, Susan secured funding from the National Historic Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) to assist Oklahoma tribes in establishing or expanding archival holdings. Susan directed the “Threats to Your Collection” project which provided funding and training to help cultural organizations provide the best possible stewardship for collections. Susan has written training manuals and produced events that deal with public relations, foundation fund raising, special event management, oral history project management, digitization projects, fund raising for tribal libraries, the care of historic photos, conservation and preservation of historical materials, community history, genealogical research, and other topics.
Donald L. Fixico (Shawnee, Sac and Fox, Mvskoke Creek and Seminole) is Distinguished Foundation Professor of History in the School of Historical, Religious and Philosophical Studies; Affiliate Faculty in American Indian Studies and Distinguished Scholar of Sustainability in the Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability at Arizona State University. His research focuses on indigenous people and the U.S. West. He has been on faculty and a visiting professor at ten universities (including the University of Nottingham in England and the John F. Kennedy Institute at the Frie University in Berlin, Germany) with postdoctoral fellowships at UCLA and The Newberry Library in Chicago. He has worked on 20 documentaries on American Indians, and is the author and editor of 13 books. His most recent books are: Indian Resilience and Rebuilding: Indigenous Nations in the Modern American West, (2013) and Call for Change: The Medicine Way of American Indian History, Ethos and Reality (2013). He is also the author of The American Indian Mind in a Linear World (2003) and Invasion of Indian Country in the 20th Century: American Capitalism and Tribal Natural Resources (1998).
Mary Anne Hansen is a Professor and Research Commons Librarian at the Montana State University Library; she is also the library’s Distance Education Coordinator and serves as a Montana liaison to the National Network of Libraries of Medicine/Pacific Northwest Region in Seattle. In addition, she co-coordinates The MSU Library’s annual Tribal College Librarians Professional Development Institute. Mary Anne earned her MLS through the University of Arizona’s distance program in Library & Information Science. Additionally, she holds a master’s degree in Adult and Higher Education with a Counseling emphasis and an undergraduate degree in Modern Languages, both from Montana State University. Her research interests include Native education, health information, innovative teaching space design, information literacy, and distance education.
Mike Kelly has been the Head of the Archives & Special Collections at Amherst College since April 2009. In 2013 he oversaw the acquisition and cataloging of one of the largest collections anywhere of books by Native American writers – the Kim-Wait/Eisenberg Collection. The collection has grown from its original 1,400 items to nearly 2,500 items today. Prior to moving to Amherst, Mike was Curator of Books in the Fales Library & Special Collections at New York University for eleven years. He holds an MA in English from the University of Virginia and earned his MLS at the University of Texas at Austin where he spent two years as an Intern in the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center. In 2016 Mike was awarded The Reese Fellowship for American Bibliography and the History of the Book in the Americas by the Bibliographical Society of America for his work on Samson Occom. Most recently, he was elected to membership in the American Antiquarian Society.
hari stephen kumar is Director of Instructional & Curricular Design Services at Amherst College. His background involves a composite career weaving engineering, teaching, and the humanities. He was born in India, spent his childhood in Yemen, and has been living in Massachusetts since 1997 where he became an American citizen in 2011 and where his three children were born. He worked in statistical software modeling for 8 years before returning to academia to pursue a teaching career in the humanities. He has a Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering (2000) and a Master of Arts degree in Communication (2011) focusing on performance studies and decolonizing academic knowledges. He is currently completing his doctoral work in English at UMass Amherst, specializing in Rhetoric & Composition; his dissertation project explores the intersections between critical pedagogies, performance studies, and cultural politics. He has taught college courses since 2008, ranging from public speaking to writing to critical social theory. He has also published widely, specializing on issues of race, politics, religion, gender, and mass media. Over the past nine years hari has worked extensively with faculty, instructors, and trainers on innovative pedagogical practices, coaching, feedback, instructional design, and authentic assessment of teaching and learning. He has been at Amherst College since 2014, where he works collaboratively with faculty, staff, and students to foster and sustain a collective sense of meaningful joy in teaching and learning. Toward that purpose, hari offers in-depth consulting on a wide variety of pedagogical concerns and design projects. hari specializes in inclusive and critical pedagogies through active learning and collaborative student work.
Sandy Littletree comes from the Eastern Shoshone Tribe and is an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation (Diné). She is currently a PhD Candidate at the University of Washington Information School and a member of the Indigenous Information Research Group (IIRG). Her research interests lie at the intersections of Indigenous systems of knowledge and librarianship. Previously, she worked as the Knowledge River Program Manager at the University of Arizona School of Information Resources and Library Science. She has developed advocacy resources for tribal libraries, produced a series of oral histories that document the stories of Arizona’s tribal libraries, and oversaw the revision of the 3rd edition of TRAILS (Tribal Library Procedures Manual). She was one of the six Honoring Generations Scholars at The University of Texas at Austin iSchool. She is a past president of the American Indian Library Association (AILA). She is originally from the Four Corners region of New Mexico.
Patricia Marroquin Norby is Director of the D’Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies at the Newberry Library, and Director of the Newberry Consortium in American Indian Studies. She is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Field Museum. She also serves on the Administrative Oversight Committee for the Chicago American Indian Community Collaborative, a seventeen-member organization that serves the needs of the Chicago American Indian community. Dr. Marroquin Norby’s professional background includes exhibition and curatorial research for the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian’s inaugural exhibits, an assistant professorship in American Indian Studies at the University of Wisconsin, and professional consultation in Indigenous Studies for universities, museums, and other cultural institutions. An award-winning scholar of American Indian art and visual culture, she earned her PhD in American Studies from the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities and her Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She recently guest edited a special issue “Aesthetic Violence: Art and Indigenous Ways of Knowing” for the American Indian Culture and Research Journal, published by UCLA. Born in Chicago, Illinois she is of Purépecha/Nde and Chicana heritage.
David W. Penney is the associate director of museum scholarship at the National Museum of the American Indian. An internationally recognized scholar, curator and museum administrator, Penney was appointed as the first associate director of the newly organized Museum Scholarship Group at the museum in April 2011 after a 31-year career at the Detroit Institute of Arts, where he last served as vice president of exhibitions and collections strategies. Penney’s exhibitions of note include “Indigenous Beauty: American Indian Art from the Diker Collection” for the American Federation of Arts (2015); “Before and After the Horizon: Anishinaabe Artists of the Great Lakes,” a collaboration with co-curator Gerald McMaster and the Art Gallery of Ontario (2014); “The American Indian: Art and Culture Between Myth and Reality” for the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam (2012); “Art of the American Indian Frontier: The Chandler Pohrt Collection” for the National Gallery of Art, Seattle Art Museum, Buffalo Bill Historical Society, Dallas Museum of Art and Detroit Institute of Arts (1992–1994); and “Ancient Art of the American Woodland Indians,” for the National Gallery of Art, Detroit Institute of Arts and Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (1986–1994).
Elizabeth James-Perry of Dartmouth, MA is enrolled with the Aquinnah Wampanoag Tribe on the island of Noepe (Marthas Vineyard). She is a Senior Cultural Resource Monitor for her Tribe’s Historic Preservation Office. She is a life-long traditional artist, mentored by family and community members. As a member of a Nation that has long lived on and harvested the sea, Elizabeth’s perspective combines art, a strong appreciation for Native storytelling, and traditional environmental knowledge in her ways of relating to life on the coastal North Atlantic. She has a dual background and holds a degree in marine science and attended Rhode Island School of Design.
Dr. Timothy B. Powell works at the American Philosophical Society and the University of Pennsylvania. At the APS, he directs the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research (CNAIR), which is dedicated to indigenous communities and scholars to digitally share materials from the APS’s very fine collection to stimulate language preservation, cultural revitalization, and community-based scholarship. CNAIR has sent digital materials to more than 150 indigenous communities in the last five years. At Penn, Tim is a faculty member in the department of Religious Studies and a Consulting Scholar at the Penn Museum.
Rachel Sayet (Mohegan) is currently the Library Assistant for the Mohegan Tribe. She is also on the board of Directors for the Tomaquag Indian Museum in Exeter, RI. A former Fellow at 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 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 8th International Symposium of Ayurveda and Health, Immunity & Inflammation: Integrating Ancient Approaches with Modern Concepts at the University of Connecticut and Dr. Amy Den Ouden’s “Native American Woman” class at UMASS Boston.
Siobhan Senier is Associate Professor of English and James H. and Claire Short Hayes Chair in the Humanities at the University of New Hampshire, where she teaches courses in Native American Literature, Women’s Studies, and Sustainability Studies. She is the editor of Dawnland Voices: An Anthology of Writing from Indigenous New England (U of Nebraska P, 2014) and dawnlandvoices.org. Her other publications include Voices of American Indian Assimilation and Resistance (U of Oklahoma P, 2001) and essays in journals including American Literature, American Indian Quarterly, Studies in American Indian Literatures, MELUS, Disability Studies Quarterly, and Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities.
Kelcy Shepherd is the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) Network Manager, working with the Content team to maintain and expand DPLA’s growing network of Hubs, with responsibilities including oversight of Hubs communications; coordination of the Hubs application process; facilitation of education and training across our Hub professional network; and support for DPLA’s education and curation initiatives.While the Head of Digital Programs at the Amherst College Library, she provided leadership for the creation, curation, delivery, and preservation of digital content and digital collections; she was instrumental in the development of Amherst College Digital Collections (acdc.amherst.edu). She has experience in digital project management, implementation of grant-funded projects, and digital repositories, as well as a history of successful interdepartmental and multi-institutional collaboration. Kelcy is a workshop instructor for the Society of American Archivists and teaches XML and metadata courses for the Simmons College Graduate School of Library and Information Science. She holds a master’s degree in Library and Information Science from Simmons College, and a BA from Iowa State University.
Kapena Shim is a Hawai’i specialist librarian for Hawaiian Collection at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa, and an archivist for the Hawaiian Legacy Foundation, a foundation dedicated to preserving the rich heritage, culture and music of Hawaiʻi. Kapena holds a Masters of Library and Information Science and a dual Bachelors of Arts in Hawaiian Studies and Hawaiian Language from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.
Elayne Silversmith has been an academic and special librarian for over 20 years with experience in reference, collection development, outreach, programs, instruction, and technical services. In June 2012, Elayne became the Librarian for the Vine Deloria, Jr. Library at the National Museum of the American Indian with the Smithsonian Institution. Prior to NMAI, she was a tenured librarian at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado where she managed the Robert W. Delaney Research Library at the Center of Southwest Studies. Elayne is a past-President of the American Indian Library Association, served as Chair of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Advisory Board at Fort Lewis College for two terms, and was a 2011 Native American Fellow at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. She is a member of the Navajo Nation and was raised in Shiprock, New Mexico. Currently, she lives in Alexandria, VA.
Sara Smith is the Arts & Humanities Librarian at Amherst College, and an interdisciplinary artist whose work traverses dance, visual art, writing, and historical research. As part of the Research and Instruction department of the library, she provides research assistance, and teaches workshops in classes for which there is a research or creative component. Her artistic studies and teaching focus on the poetics and politics of embodied research. She holds a MLIS from Simmons College, a MFA in dance from Sarah Lawrence College, and a BA from Hampshire College.
Shirley K. Sneve is the Executive Director of Vision Maker Media, whose mission is to empower and engage Native People to tell stories. An enrolled member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe in South Dakota, she has been in Nebraska for 12 years. She has served as director of Arts Extension Service in Amherst, Massachusetts, and the Washington Pavilion of Arts and Science’s Visual Arts Center in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Shirley was assistant director for the South Dakota Arts Council, and she was a founder of Northern Plains Tribal Arts Show, the Oyate Trail cultural tourism byway, and the Alliance of Tribal Tourism Advocates. She started her career as a producer for South Dakota Public Broadcasting. She serves on the boards of The Association of American Cultures, the Friends of the Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center, the South East Nebraska Native American Coalition, and the Arts Extension Institute. She chairs the board of Native Americans in Philanthropy. Shirley is also a consultant with Creative Community Builders.
Kiara M. Vigil (of Dakota and Apache heritage) is an assistant Professor of American Studies at Amherst College where she specializes in teaching and research related to Native American Studies. She received her doctorate from the University of Michigan in American Culture, and holds master’s degrees from Dartmouth College as well as Columbia University’s Teachers College, and a bachelor’s degree from Tufts University in History. Vigil is also the past recipient of the Gaius Charles Bolin fellowship from Williams College as well as fellowships from the Autry National Center, the Mellon Foundation, the Newberry Library, and the Rackham Graduate School at the University of Michigan. She has published “Red/Black Literature” in The Oxford Handbook of Indigenous American Literatures edited by Daniel Heath Justice and James H. Cox, and co-authored with Tiya Miles, as well as “Turn of the Century Indian Intellectualism: Language and Literacy in Simon Pokagon’s Queen of the Woods” in O-gi-maw-kwe Mit-i-gwa-ki (Queen of the Woods) by Simon Pokagon, with a foreword by Philip J. Deloria, published by the Michigan State University Press. Her first book, Indigenous Intellectuals: Sovereignty, Citizenship, and the American Imagination, 1880-1930, was published by Cambridge University Press in July 2015. In it Vigil examines the cultural production of four prominent Native intellectuals: Charles Eastman, Carlos Montezuma, Gertrude Bonnin, and Luther Standing Bear within the shifting social and political milieu of the early twentieth century. At present she is working on the research and writing for her second book project tentatively titled Natives in Transit: Indian Entertainment, Urban Life, and Activism, 1930-1970, which intends to explore the connections between Native entertainment networks and labor practices in California and the Southwest. Vigil also has a chapter titled “William Jones: Indian, Anthropologist, Murder Victim” that is forthcoming in Indigenous Visions: Rediscovering the World of Franz Boas, edited by Ned Blackhawk and Isaiah Wilner that will be published by Yale University Press.
Bettina M. Washington, Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) Tribal Historic Preservation Officer/Cultural Director. A member of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah), she was born on Martha’s Vineyard and raised in the town of Gay Head/Aquinnah. One of the last students to be taught at the “Little Red Schoolhouse” and Island schools upon high school graduation, left the Island to attend college at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts (North Adams State College) where she graduated with a BA in Psychology. She began working for the THPO department of the Tribe in 2006 on a part-time basis. In 2008 she was raised to her present position where she is responsible for Section 106 review under the NHPA and assuring that Aquinnah Wampanoag culture is represented accurately both on tribal lands, the media and surrounding communities. She is also responsible for all traditional cultural events throughout the year. In her work she has had the honor of participating in Section 106 consultations that have resulted in landmark decisions in cultural historic preservation: the Turners Falls Ceremonial Stone Landscape(CSL), first CSL east of the Mississippi and Nantucket Sound, the first body of water, both were determined to be eligible for the National Register of Historic Properties. She divides her time between Aquinnah and Waltham, MA where she resides with her husband, Michael.