Watie Akins is a respected elder from the Penobscot Nation.  He is an accomplished musician who has published two CDs reinterpreting the traditional music of the Wabanaki Confederacy—For the Grandchildren: Pageant Songs Plus Songs from the Past and Greeting My Relatives: Part Two of For the Grandchildren Collection.  He has won fellowships at the Newberry Library and the American Philosophical Society to study recordings made in the early 20th century, which he subsequently reinterpreted on his two CDs.  Mr. Akins continues to work closely with the APS on an English - Penobscot dictionary project based on the Frank Siebert collection.  As a young man Akins worked with Siebert to create a Penobscot - English dictionary, which is of limited use because there are so few fluent speakers left.

Thomas Belt is a distinguished elder and fluent Cherokee speaker who was born in the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma.  He currently works for the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians in North Carolina and is Elder-in-Residence at the Cherokee Studies Program at Western Carolina University, where he works on language preservation and cultural revitalization.  He received a Getty Fellowship at the American Philosophical Society to study the Cherokee language recordings made by Frank Speck between 1937-1944.  The Society provided Mr. Belt with digital copies of this material so that they could be returned to the community for use in the Cherokee total immersion school at the Kituwah Preservation and Education Program.

Donald Soctomah is the Tribal Historic Preservation Officer for the Passamaquoddy Nation, located on the border between Maine and New Brunswick, Canada.  Mr. Soctomah is an accomplished researcher and scholar who has done research in many archives, making copies of historical documents and photographs so that they can be returned to the community to help with language preservation and cultural revitalization.  The APS, for example, provided digital images from the Frank Speck photographic collection of women in traditional Passamaquoddy regalia so that women in his community could incorporate old designs into new works.

T.J. Holland the Cultural Resources Manager for the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians in North Carolina and curator of the tribally-owned Junaluska Museum on the Snowbird reservation.  His research at the APS focused on the spiritual, political, and social dimensions of the Cherokee stickball game.  The Frank Speck collections contain numerous photographs and ethnographic descriptions of the ceremonies and dances that were performed at the time of stickball games.  Mr. Holland is still actively involved in keeping the traditional aspects of stickball alive in his community, refereeing games for the Snowbird team and telling stories to the players about games played in the 1800s, some of which he was kind enough to share in the Cherokee exhibit on this site.  He is currently working on an exhibit about stickball for the Junaluska Museum in partnership with the American Philosophical Society, the National Anthropological Archives, and the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

Roger Roulette is an accomplished linguist and Ojibwe language specialist at the University of Manitoba.  He serves as a consultant for Aboriginal Languages of Manitoba project.  Together with Maureen Matthews, he has published important scholarly articles on the Anishinaabeg of northern Manitoba and Ontario.  They are leading scholars on A. Irving Hallowell's Ojibwe research. Mr. Roulette was a Getty Fellow at the APS, where he worked to translate and interpret material in the Ojibwe language and indigenous maps.  He has also prepared several ethnographic radio programs on Ojibwe culture for CBQ Radio in Thunder Bay, Ontario.

Dr. Maureen Matthews is one of the leading authorities in North America on the Ojibwe research and writings of A. Irving Hallowell.  Dr. Matthews worked for many years as a anthropological journalist for the Canadian Broadcasting Company, producing programs such as "Fairwind's Drum," "Thunderbirds," and "Isinamownin: The White Man's Indian."  She currently serves as a consultant for the Pimachiowin Aki corporation, which is preparing an UNESCO World Heritage Site grant in partnership with five Ojibwe First Nations and the provincial governments and Manitoba and Ontario.  It is the first World Heritage Site application ever submitted by the Canadian government on behalf of First Nations communities.  Dr. Matthews recently donated her papers, including more than 700 hours of interviews about Ojibwe and Cree culture, to the American Philosophical Society where they will become part of the Digital Archive of Native American Languages, a project sponsored by the Mellon Foundation.