way̓! (hello)

Assistant Professor of Native American/Indigenous Law and Policy

My work is grounded in and through Indigenous womxn’s organizing in frontline activism. I am sqelixʷ, from the Spokane-Coeur d’Alene, and I was raised on the Yakama Nation Reservation in what's currently known as WA State. My work is informed by these places and is interdisciplinary in nature, drawing from Fourth World Analysis, Feminist Studies, Indigenous legal theory, sociology, and critical race and ethinic studies. From this view, I study the politics of embodied knowledge, environmental racism, climate justice, and settler law, focusing on the interplay of Indigenous erasure, white supremacy, and heteropatriarchy.

My current project examines these dynamics, drawing from the lived critiques of Indigenous womxn’s embodied knowledge on the frontlines of environmental and gender justice. In this work, I challenge mainstream scholarship and movement spaces that fail to account for the settler-colonial context stream and mobilize Indigenous Knowledge toward liberal ecological reform.

In the classroom, I draw from Indigenous feminisms and critical pedagogy to facilitate a collective exploration of how power affects our individual and group day-to-day experiences. We think about how, for example, settler colonialism informs the ways that we understand ourselves and how others see us, our bodies, and our Lands. Moreover, I ask, what might we do to challenge and undermine oppressive systems like Indigenous erasure, anti-Blackness, and heteropatriarchy. How can we think about and enact a different set of relations?

Outside the formal classroom, I have prior experience as a community organizer and volunteer for various health, cultural, and social justice efforts. I interned with the Center of World Indigenous Studies (CWSI) as a co-researcher on the Radiation Risk Assessment Action Project with atwai (deceased) Rudolph Ryser, Ph.D., and atwai Russel Jim. During my time with CWIS, I conducted background research and social analysis of Hanford's nuclear contamination and its cultural and epidemiological effects on Yakama Lands. To contribute to building and supporting Native and Indigenous community needs, in 2019-20, I co-authored an assessment of Native youth organizing needs titled Indigenous Youth Leadership.

I admire fierce dreamers, respect sensible practitioners, and believe in a collective responsibility to dream otherwise.

Areas of Specialization and Interest:

Indigenous Feminisms, Settler Colonial Analysis, Law and Policy, Critical pedagogy, Land Pedagogy and EJ