The Native American Scholars Initiative (NASI) complements the collaborative, community-engaged work undertaken by the Center for Native American and Ethnic Research . With funding from The Mellon Foundation, NASI promotes research in the field of Native American and Indigenous Studies and related fields by undergraduates, Native American scholars, Tribal College faculty members, and researchers who piece of work closely with archives and Native communities. NASI offers almanac opportunities through pre- and mail-doctoral fellowships, undergraduate internships, workshops and other resources.

The Mellon Foundation Native American Scholars Initiative Postdoctoral Fellowship

Brooke Bauer, University of Southward Carolina, Lancaster, "Catawba Women and Nation-building, 1540-1840"


The Mellon Foundation Native American Scholars Initiative Predoctoral Fellowship

Candy Martinez, University of California, Santa Cruz, "Rethinking Structural Inequalities and Emotional Illnesses in Oaxacan Communities"


The Mellon Foundation NASI Digital Noesis Sharing (DKS) Fellowship

Cassandra Smith, Academy of Illinois, Chicago, "Telling History from the Land"

Robbie Jimerson, Rochester Institute of Applied science, "Seneca Language Revitalization"

Dianne Hinkley, Cowichan Tribes Land Enquiry, "Oral Histories with Cowichan Elders"

Hilary Leathem, Academy of Chicago, and Pedro Guillermo Ramon Celis, Indiana University, Bloomington, "Este Lugar Tiene Muchas Historias"


The Mellon Foundation NASI Undergraduate Summertime Interns

Dynette Chavez, Whittier College

Nancy Mendoza-Ruiz, University of Washington

Tieranny Keahna, Coe College

The Andrew W. Mellon Native American Scholars Initiative Postdoctoral Fellowship

Timothy Vasko, Barnard College, "Native Information: Indigenous Subjectivity and Political Autonomy in Early-Modernistic Colonial Arts of Governance, 1492-1690"


The Andrew W. Mellon Native American Scholars Initiative Predoctoral Fellowship

Mary Kate Kelly, Tulane Academy, "Speech Carved in Stone: Language Variation among the Ancient Lowland Mayas"

Angela Tapia, Academy of Texas Austin, "Mujeres de Polleras: Weaving A Way of Being in The Altiplano Region"


The Andrew W. Mellon NASI Digital Knowledge Sharing (DKS) Fellowship

Laverne Demientieff, Academy of Alaska Fairbanks, "Digitizing Deg Xinag: Inspiring Connections Between Language Learning and Well-Being"

Amy E. Den Ouden, University of Massachusetts, Boston, "Herring Pond Wampanoag Tribal Annal"

Brandon Graham, Chippewas of the Thames, "Chippewas of the Thames First Nation Treaty Research"

X'unei Lance Twitchell, University of Alaska Southeast, "Tlingit Language Revitalization"


NASI Undergraduate Summertime Interns

William Cummins, Virginia Commonwealth Academy

Jasmine Gloria, Tulane Academy

Liandra Skenandore, Northland Higher

Tiffanie Hardbarger (The Andrew Westward. 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 Resource & Development from Arizona State University. Currently, Tiffanie is an Assistant Professor in the Cherokee & Indigenous Studies section at Northeastern Country University in Tahlequah, OK. She has developed and taught interdisciplinary courses including: community and cultural sustainability, traditional ecological cognition systems, food sovereignty, sustainable tourism, Cherokee cultural heritage and lifeways, and Indigenous-led self-conclusion 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 too as a recognition of the deep importance of perpetuating customs-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 means 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 economical work groups, gadugi has been described every bit a group of people (or a community) coming together to achieve one goal. The practices of gathering edible plants and gadugi volition be examined in two Cherokee tribal nations, the Cherokee Nation (Oklahoma) and the Eastern Ring of Cherokee Indians (North Carolina). More research is needed to amend agreement the barriers to passing knowledge and language on to time to come generations. Therefore, the intent is to examine the changes over fourth dimension 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 Beau) is an interdisciplinary scholar and author from Westward 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 Higher. The working championship 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 Due west's 1772 painting, Penn's Treaty with the Indians at Shackamaxon, he deploys a broad understanding of operation to include visual arts, trip the light fantastic toe, 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'southward 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 improver 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, trip the light fantastic, sound design, and history in order to present historical bear witness in more immersive ways for general audiences.

Research Projection: "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 straight 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 programme at the Academy of Nevada, Reno. Burtt's research explores state-sanctioned genocide and the Wašiw.

Research Project: "Reclaiming Wašiw History: Washoe Digital Archive Structure"

Ashley Cordes is a doctoral candidate in Media Studies at University of Oregon with an accent in Native American Studies. Her research focuses on alternative and digital media in Native American tribal and global contexts. She is an enrolled fellow member of the Coquille Indian Tribe based in Coos Bay, Oregon and Chair of their Culture and Didactics Committee.  Some of her work can exist found in Telly & New Media and New Media & Club, and she recently received an award for outstanding doctoral pupil teaching.  Exterior of academics she enjoys hiking and nature, international travel, and time with animals.

Research Projection: "Currency every bit Advice and Oregon Colonial Processes of the 1850s"

Maria Montenegro is a 3rd twelvemonth doctoral student in Information Studies at UCLA. Her interdisciplinary research sits at the intersection of critical archival theory, Indigenous studies, and tribal police and policy, in chat with anticolonial theory and the Indigenous data sovereignty move. 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 Holding. 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 Bear witness? 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 linguistic communication documentation and revitalization, focusing on Chiwere and other Siouan languages.  His research explores how representations of ethnic 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 Guild, 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.

Enquiry Projection: "Unarchiving Chiwere Language Documentation: Recontextualizing the Marsh/Small Texts"


NASI Undergraduate Summer Interns

Ashton Dunkley is a ascension senior at Temple University with a History and Anthropology double major, as well as an Italian modest. Forth with beingness a D-1 runway and cantankerous country athlete, Ashton is also within Temple University's Honors College and a tutor at the Resnick Academic Support Centre. In response to her success as a student, Ashton was awarded Temple Academy's Scholar-Athlete of the Year Laurels. She has been involved with research under the direction of diverse faculty members in the History department. Her thesis, titled "Hidden in Plain Sight: The American Indian Move and the Revival of the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape, 1969-1982," explored the resurgence of the New Jersey tribal customs in the latter one-half of the 20th century and argued AIM's direct impact on the event. This item topic was very about to her centre every bit 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 educatee at Northern Arizona University and a educatee assistant at NAU Cline Library - Special Collections and Archives. Mowana is in the last yr of her undergraduate studies, majoring in Anthropology with an accent in Archaeology and a pocket-size in History.

Ian McAlpin merely 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 Ethnic 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.

Tiffany Hale (Andrew W. Mellon Native American Scholars Initiative Postdoctoral Beau) completed her Ph.D. in the department of history at Yale University with a specialization in Indigenous Studies and Usa History. Her dissertation examined the interplay between U.S. war machine strategy and American Indian spiritual practices in the belatedly nineteenth century. Tiffany was near recently a brusk term fellow at the Newberry Library in Chicago and a dissertation inquiry fellow at the Beinecke Rare Volume and Manuscript Library. She is of Cherokee and African American descent, but was built-in in Gallup, New United mexican states and raised in Virginia, North Carolina, and California. She is currently revising her dissertation into a volume manuscript.

Research Project: "Hostiles and Friendlies: Memory, U.S. Institutions, and the 1890 Ghost Dance"


Teresa Montoya (Diné) (Andrew Westward. Mellon Native American Scholars Initiative Predoctoral Fellow) is pursuing a Ph.D. in Anthropology at New York Academy where she too earned a document in Culture and Media (2015). She holds an M.A. in Museum Anthropology (2011) from the Academy of Denver. Currently, Montoya is working on a multimedia project, The Day Our River Ran Xanthous/ Tó Łitso, a Diné centered visual meditation on the landscapes and waterscapes affected by the Gold King Mine spill in August of 2015. Themes of environmental contagion and settler colonialism raised in this project are primal to her dissertation research that engages issues of jurisdiction and regulation alongside articulations of sovereignty for Diné communities against various forms of toxic exposure in the Navajo Nation. Montoya'due south doctoral coursework and enquiry has been generously supported past funding from: New York University, the Ford Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and the National Science Foundation.

Research Project: "Tracing Toxicity: Dine Politics of Permeability"


Holly Miowak Guise (Andrew W. Mellon NASI Digital Knowledge Sharing Beau) is a History Ph.D. candidate at Yale University completing her dissertation on World War 2 Alaska Native history. Built-in in Anchorage, and Iñupiaq with family from Unalakleet, her research travels have carried her across Alaska. Her dissertation bridges athenaeum and elder oral histories with a focus on gender, internment, Native activism, and military service during the war. She has received funding for her research from the Ford Foundation, the Melt Inlet Historical Club, the Western History Association, the American Philosophical Guild, and at Yale she has been named the Bartlett Giamatti Boyfriend, William K. Fitch Young man, Irene Battell Larned Fellow, Ralph H. Gabriel Young man, and Paul C. Gignilliat Fellow.

Enquiry Projection: "World State of war II and the First Peoples of the Last Frontier"


Megan Lukaniec (Andrew Westward. Mellon NASI Digital Knowledge Sharing Fellow) is a member of the Huron-Wendat Nation of Wendake, Québec, Canada and a Ph.D. candidate in the Section of Linguistics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her dissertation, currently in grooming, is a grammer of her heritage language, Wendat. As the final speakers of this language passed away during the mid-19th century, Lukaniec'southward research is based upon the historical documentation of the language, which dates from the 17th century onward and spans several centuries. Her work is situated within the broader linguistic communication reclamation and revitalization efforts in which she has played an active role for the by decade.

Enquiry Project: "A Grammer of Wendat (Huron)"


Anna Naruta-Moya (Andrew W. Mellon NASI Digital Knowledge Sharing Fellow) is project managing director for the Ethnic Digital Archive, an IMLS National Leadership Grant project of the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture (Santa Fe, New United mexican states) in partnership with the Indian Pueblo Cultural Heart and the State Library Tribal Libraries Plan. Dr. Naruta-Moya has served as an archivist for the Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University, and the US National Archives, and consults for organizations including the Santa Fe Opera. Concern for the ability to share and communicate near objects from unlike repositories and create projects with longevity led her to bring together the International Epitome Interoperability Framework (IIIF) community to help create shared open source applications for archival collections. A past fellow of the Getty summertime institute in digital art history, she is a inquiry associate professor of the University of New Mexico and a inquiry associate of the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture.

Daniel Moya (Tewa, P'o Suwae Ge Owingeh) conducts social media outreach and customs appointment for the Indigenous Digital Archive. Mr. Moya was raised on the reservation past his grandfather and his grandmother, who attended the Santa Fe Indian Industrial boarding schoolhouse from the age of five. (Her male parent was one of the few graduates from Carlisle Indian Industrial School, in 1901.) Mr. Moya works as a contractor for the Us State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Diplomacy International Company Leadership Program. He is an honor-winning artist in sculpture and bronze, received a New Mexico History Scholar award for research on the Indian Boarding Schools of Santa Fe, and has given talks on the boarding schools as incubators of Native American sports.

Research Project: "Indigenous Digital Archive"


Edward Noel Smyth (Andrew W. Mellon NASI Digital Knowledge Sharing Swain) received his Ph.D. in History from the University of California-Santa Cruz (UCSC) in 2016. He is a lecturer for the Writing Plan at UCSC and also teaches history courses at Cabrillo Community Higher. He is currently working on a book project and an commodity about the Natchez who lived with the Chickasaws in the 1730s.

Inquiry Project: "Digital Archives of Natchez Oral Histories"