Tiffanie Hardbarger (The Andrew W. Mellon Native American Scholars Initiative Postdoctoral Fellow) of English/Irish and Cherokee decent and a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, has a PhD in Community Resources & Development from Arizona State University. Currently, Tiffanie is an Assistant Professor in the Cherokee & Indigenous Studies department at Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, OK. She has developed and taught interdisciplinary courses including: community and cultural sustainability, traditional ecological knowledge systems, food sovereignty, sustainable tourism, Cherokee cultural heritage and lifeways, and Indigenous-led self-determination movements. Her dissertation, Sustainable Communities: Through the Lens of Cherokee Youth (2016), developed a Cherokee-led community development framework and raised the voices of Cherokee youth regarding questions of sustainable communities and perpetuating cultural practices. From this participatory community-based study, the concept of ᎢᏳᎾᏛᏁᎵᏓᏍᏗ ("lifeways") emerged as a salient Cherokee-centered concept as well as a recognition of the deep importance of perpetuating community-based practices.
During this upcoming year she will be working to repatriate relevant archival materials to the Cherokee people in Oklahoma to be translated and used in multiple ways including community programs, developing language materials and curricula, etc. Additionally, a goal is to glean more specific data regarding the changes over time in Cherokee community-based practices. ᎦᏚᎩ (gadugi) is an example of a community practice that honors our ᎢᏳᎾᏛᏁᎵᏓᏍᏗ and worldview. With historical ties to communal economic work groups, gadugi has been described as a group of people (or a community) coming together to achieve one goal. The practices of gathering edible plants and gadugi will be examined in two Cherokee tribal nations, the Cherokee Nation (Oklahoma) and the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (North Carolina). More research is needed to better understanding the barriers to passing knowledge and language on to future generations. Therefore, the intent is to examine the changes over time in community-based practices, such as how such land-centered literacies are taught, learned, and perpetuated.
Research Project: “Sustainable Communities: Through the Lens of Cherokee Youth”
Morgan Ridgway (The Andrew W. Mellon Native American Scholars Initiative Predoctoral Fellow) is an interdisciplinary scholar and writer from West Philadelphia. Currently, he is a History PhD candidate at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with graduate minors in American Indian Studies and Queer Studies. Prior to moving to Illinois, Chris received his B.A. in Psychology and Gender and Sexuality Studies from Swarthmore College. The working title of his dissertation is “This Feeling of Being Together with Your Own: Competing Indigeneities in 20th century Philadelphia” which investigates the ways indigeneity was debated, enacted, and acknowledged by urban Native and non-Native people. Moving from Benjamin West’s 1772 painting, Penn’s Treaty with the Indians at Shackamaxon, he deploys a broad understanding of performance to include visual arts, dance, lectures, court trials, marches, etc., to interrogate how and why Philadelphia became a key site in the production of knowledge regarding what it meant be indigenous in the 20th century. Chris brings together anthropologists, religious groups, activists, architects, and an urban Indian center, asking what did “indigenous” mean, where was Philadelphia’s Native population, and how did its members create space for themselves in the city? In utilizing performance he focuses on the moments of possibility for Native life and the utopian potential within Philadelphia’s multi-tribal organization.
In addition to his scholarly pursuits, Chris wants to discover new ways of articulating and displaying history. He is particularly interested in findings points of connection between theatre, dance, sound design, and history in order to present historical evidence in more immersive ways for general audiences.
Research Project: “This Feeling of Being Together with Your Own: Competing Indigeneities in 20th century Philadelphia”
The Andrew W. Mellon NASI Digital Knowledge Sharing (DKS) Fellows
Patrick DeɁileligi Burtt is an enrolled member of the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California (Wašiw) and a direct descendent of the Tule River Tribe (Yokut). He is a graduate of Fort Lewis College and earned a Master of Arts in American Indian Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2018. In Fall 2018 he will enroll in the History PhD program at the University of Nevada, Reno. Burtt’s research explores state-sanctioned genocide and the Wašiw.
Research Project: "Reclaiming Wašiw History: Washoe Digital Archive Construction"
Ashley Cordes is a doctoral candidate in Media Studies at University of Oregon with an emphasis in Native American Studies. Her research focuses on alternative and digital media in Native American tribal and global contexts. She is an enrolled member of the Coquille Indian Tribe based in Coos Bay, Oregon and Chair of their Culture and Education Committee. Some of her work can be found in Television & New Media and New Media & Society, and she recently received an award for outstanding doctoral student teaching. Outside of academics she enjoys hiking and nature, international travel, and time with animals.
Research Project: "Currency as Communication and Oregon Colonial Processes of the 1850s"
Maria Montenegro is a third year doctoral student in Information Studies at UCLA. Her interdisciplinary research sits at the intersection of critical archival theory, Indigenous studies, and tribal law and policy, in conversation with anticolonial theory and the Indigenous data sovereignty movement. With an MA in Museum Studies from NYU and a BA in Aesthetics from Universidad Catolica (Chile), she recently co-authored “Collaborative Encounters in Digital (Cultural) Property: Tracing Temporal Relationships of Context and Locality” with Dr. Jane Anderson, in the Routledge Companion to Cultural Property. She currently works with Dr. Kim Christen in the Sustainable Heritage Network and with Dr. Jane Anderson in Local Contexts.
Research Project: "What Makes Evidence Evidence? The Use and Interpretation of Records in the Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians’ Federal Acknowledgment Petition"
Saul Schwartz is a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. He works on Native American language documentation and revitalization, focusing on Chiwere and other Siouan languages. His research explores how representations of indigenous heritage languages—how they are recorded, written, talked about, translated, and curated—give them cultural significance. In addition to compiling a digital database of Chiwere texts at the American Philosophical Society, he is currently writing on the ideological dominance of immersion methods in Native American language revitalization and on the cultural politics of obscenity in Siouan languages.
Research Project: "Unarchiving Chiwere Language Documentation: Recontextualizing the Marsh/Small Texts"
NASI Undergraduate Summer Interns
Ashton Dunkley is a rising senior at Temple University with a History and Anthropology double major, as well as an Italian minor. Along with being a D-1 track and cross country athlete, Ashton is also within Temple University’s Honors College and a tutor at the Resnick Academic Support Center. In response to her success as a student, Ashton was awarded Temple University’s Scholar-Athlete of the Year Award. She has been involved with research under the direction of various faculty members in the History department. Her thesis, titled “Hidden in Plain Sight: The American Indian Movement and the Revival of the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape, 1969-1982,” explored the resurgence of the New Jersey tribal community in the latter half of the 20th century and argued AIM’s direct impact on the event. This particular topic was very near to her heart as she is Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape. Outside of academics and running, Ashton likes to spend her time painting, reading, and embroidering.
Mowana Lomaomvaya is a member of the Hopi Tribe and is from the village of Hotevilla on Third Mesa in northeastern Arizona. She is a student at Northern Arizona University and a student assistant at NAU Cline Library - Special Collections and Archives. Mowana is in the last year of her undergraduate studies, majoring in Anthropology with an emphasis in Archaeology and a minor in History.
Ian McAlpin just graduated in May from Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, majoring in Cherokee Cultural Studies, emphasizing in language revitalization and minoring in 2D Fine Arts. In Fall 2018 he will start studying Library Sciences at the University of Oklahoma Tulsa campus, with a focus in Indigenous Studies. His goals are to work in a museum or library and continue to do his part in preserving and revitalizing Cherokee language and culture. Ian belongs to Squirrel Ridge Ceremonial Grounds in Kenwood, Oklahoma and is Gaduwa.
