I am a UC President's and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow. in the Department of English at the University of California, Riverside.

My dissertation project, Wówayupike: Relational Practices Between Art, Land, and Culture, traces the relational intersections of art, land, and culture to demonstrate a continuum of Lakota intellectual traditions. Methodologically and theoretically, Indigenous articulations of relationality are the primary tool I use to communicate Lakota kinship values' interrelatedness. I illustrate a Lakota relationality through Lakota cultural connections to other-than-human beings and the use of creative practices as established through storytelling, poetry, and material culture that is represented within an accessible articulation of Očéti Šakówiŋ (Northern Plains tribal) communities. My analysis applies Lakota concepts of ikčé, the everyday, and wówayupike, ingenuity, to reify a continuum of Očéti Šakówiŋ artistic engagements. I concentrate on Lakota culture, which I know intimately, and employ self-reflexivity to articulate a Lakota relationality in present-day terms. My research engages Indigenous feminist praxis, autoethnographic and ethnographic methods with family members, regional Lakota artists, local Lakota culture bearers, and Lakota community organizers working and creating in the Northern Plains region. I analyze everyday examples of creative Lakota culture not confined by formal institutions like popular art galleries or non-native museums. Wówayupike: Relational Practices Between Art, Land, and Culture contributes to ongoing conversations about how Indigenous communities continue to adapt, evolve, and find joy—as they have always done—in the face of settler colonialism, structural racism, and the long historical trajectory of oppression in what is now the United States. [Photo taken by Wade Patton (beaded cuff by Wade Patton).]

Doctoral Studies

UCLA Center for the Study of Women Thinking Gender - Sexual Violence as Structural Violence: Feminist Visions of Transformative Justice Friday, March 6, 2020.

 

Current Projects

I will join a qualitative research team in the Fall of 2023 to work with Arts organizations across the United States to gather data surrounding performance ideas within Indigenous communities. To read our phase one report, please visit: Brightening the Spotlight.

The video to the left is of a conference presentation/paper titled “A Silent Pow Wow for MMIW: Indigenous Performance as a Way to Map Resistance” from 2022.

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Guest Lecture

Lecture was given at the University of South Dakota via Zoom. Title: Lakota Relationality and the Complications of “Being a good relative.”

Digital Media

Prior to entering my doctoral program, I received a Master’s Degree in Communications from the University of Washington’s Native Voice Indigenous Documentary Film Program. I have a keen interest in utilizing digital media to tell stories with, about, and for Indigenous communities. Below is my MA Thesis film. I worked with Faculty, graduate students, and staff at the University of Washington, Seattle to discuss the pathways through Higher Education.