Damian Baca (Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures)Baca is of Mexican, Spanish, and Rio Grande Pueblo Indian ancestry. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric and American Cultures as well as an affiliate faculty in Chicano-Latino Studies, American Studies, and the Center for Latin American and Carribean Studies. Baca teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in writing, American Indian rhetorics, postcolonial theory, and Chicano literature. His research focuses on Mesoamerican/Mexican and Chicano writing systems, with recent publications appearing in Dialogue: A Journal for Writing Specialists;An Introduction to Authorship: A Guide for Teachers and Scholars of Composition and Rhetoric; and Encyclopedia of Latinas and Latinos in the United States. His manuscript, ReWorlding Rhetoric: Intersecting Indigenist@, IndoHispana/o, and Mexican Rhetorics in America, co-written with Dora Ramirez, is currently under review. Baca is currently writing a book on contemporary Mexican codices, post-Columbian manuscripts with converging pictorial and alphabetic scripts.

Phil Bellfy (Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures) is a member of the White Earth Band of Minnesota Chippewa. Dr. Bellfy teaches first-year writing for WRAC, as well as History and IAH courses which deal with the Native People of North America. His research is concerned with the comparative experience of the indigenous people in both the United States and Canada, especially those who live on the border. His manuscript, Three Fires Unity: The Anishnabeg of the Lake Huron Borderlands,was selected as the winner of the 2003 North American Indian Prose Award by the University of Nebraska Press. Phil is the Founder and Co-director of the Center for the Study of Indigenous Border Issues. He is also involved in website development, including the online journal, Indigenous Policy.

Suzanne Cross (Social Work) received her M.S.W. from the University of Michigan in 1984. In 1993, she earned her Ph.D. from Michigan State University. Before joining the MSU faculty she taught at Central Michian University, where she was granted tenure. She was previously on faculty at Arizona State University. Dr. Cross was elected to the National Board of Directors of the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) in August 2005 for a three year term. Her areas of expertise include bereavement, gerontology and contemporary Native American issues. Dr. Cross has taught the following courses: Social Work Practice and Theory I & II, Social Work Interviewing, Social Work Practice in Gerontology, and the Historical and Contemporary Issues of Native Women, and Social Work with American Indian Families and Communities.

Hip, Here and Now, Ellen Cushman (Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures) is is a friend to small animals and nemesis to ignorance, a Cherokee citizen and Associate Professor of WRAC. Prof. Cushman’s interest include sign technologies and meaning making--such as literacy, language preservation, and Native people's taking ownership of their own representations via multiple mediums. She's best known for activist methodologies, discussions of being a public intellectual, service learning, and having a “penchant for fine cowboy boots.” Professional Writing students and she developed online educational resources in collaboration with the Cherokee Nation for their website; she's taught in the Cherokee Nation's Johnson O'Malley Program Youth Leadership Institute; and she's currently writing with Tom Holm (University of Arizona, Creek/Cherokee) Native American History for Beginners.

Matthew L.M. Fletcher (MSU College of Law) is an enrolled member of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians and an Assistant Professor at Michigan State University College of Law and Director of the Indigenous Law and Policy Center. He teaches American Indian law courses and Constitutional Law I. He also sits as an appellate judge for the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians, the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, and the Hoopa Valley Tribe, and is a consultant to the Seneca Nation of Indians Court of Appeals. Professor Fletcher has worked as a staff attorney for four Indian Tribes – the Pascua Yaqui Tribe (1998 to 1999), the Hoopa Valley Tribe (2000 to 2001), the Suquamish Tribe (2001), and the Grand Traverse Band (2001 to 2004). He is admitted to practice in Michigan, Arizona, and Washington. In the summer of 2005, he was the Indian Law instructor at the American Indian Law Center’s Pre-Law Summer Institute. He also is Co-Chair of the Federal Bar Association’s Annual Indian Law Conference in Albuquerque, the largest Indian law conference in the country. He has published over 20 articles and essays since 2003, including forthcoming articles in the Hastings Law Journal, Tulane Law Review, and the St. John's Law Review .

Lynne Goldstein (Anthropology) is a Professor in the Department of Anthropology. Her research has generally focused on Great Lakes archaeology, and her work has been conducted at the Aztalan site (ca. AD 1000) in southeastern Wisconsin. Goldstein has authored several books and numerous scientific articles on archaeological topics, and she has been active in public education, including radio broadcasts and teacher training. She has conducted field work in Illinois, Wisconsin, and California, and has worked with American Indian tribes in Wisconsin and elsewhere, including collaborative work in developing Wisconsin¹s burial law. Goldstein has served in many roles concerning repatriation issues, including a 15-year position on the Smithsonian¹s Repatriation Review Committee; she was the first committee member who was nominated by both Indian tribes and the scientific community. Goldstein also served a four-year term as Editor of American Antiquity, the major archaeology journal in the United States.

Del Laverdure (MSU College of Law) Professor Laverdure is a leading expert in taxation of indigenous peoples and tribal court systems. Professor Laverdure is the Chief Justice of the Crow Nation, serving since July 2002, and is an Appellate Judge of the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community. He has testified before the Crow Legislature about tribal / state compacts, water rights and tobacco tax, judicial impeachment processes, qualifications of tribal judges and separation of powers in tribal governments.Born on the Crow Indian Reservation, Professor Laverdure writes and speaks frequently on tribal court systems, tribal, federal, and state taxation of entities and activities in Indian country, indigenous identity and affirmative action and Indian preference, and treaty rights of indigenous peoples. He has forthcoming articles entitled, "A Historical Braid of Inequality: An Indigenous Perspective of Brown v. Board of Education," "Judicial Independence in Tribal Court Systems," and "Indian Tribes and Intergovernmental Tax Immunity." He is on leave from MSU in 2006-07 and 2007-08, serving as counsel with the Crow Nation.

Kimberli Lee (Writing Rhetoric and American Cultures) Dr. Lee has taught American literature and writing courses at various institutions including Tarleton State University, Central Texas College, and McLennan Community College. Lee has published several works on Mari Sandoz including a book review in Great Plains Quarterly, an essay in Reclaiming Native Cultures, and an online finding aide to the University of Nebraska's Mari Sandoz Collection. She is now engaged in writing a book about Mari Sandoz and her political activism on behalf of the Northern Plains tribes during the termination era,which will be published by Texas Tech Press in 2007. Additionally, Lee has begun another book-length project that focuses on contemporary Native American music as sites of resistance. Native musicians Lee is researching are Buffy St. Marie, John Trudell, Joy Harjo, Jim Boyd, Keith Secola, and Robbie Robertson. Additional areas of interest are Lakota Studies and multiethnic literatures of North America, with a particular interest in American Indian rhetorics, nonfiction, and film.

William A. Lovis is Curator of Anthropology at the MSU Museum and Professor in the Department of Anthropology, where he teaches courses in North American Archaeology and Anthropology & Archaeology of Hunter Gatherers. Dr. Lovis' primary research interests are in the ethnography and archaeology of hunter gatherers, and the transition from hunting and gathering to indigenous horticulture in the Great Lakes region, primarily in the Saginaw Valley of Michigan where he has conducted extensive fieldwork on Archaic age sites predating 2500 years ago. He has also been engaged in comparative field studies in northern England focusing on the Mesolithic period. Lovis has recently published on stable isotope analysis and the absolute dating of carbonized cooking residues on early ceramics, long distance hunter gatherer logistic mobility in the Saginaw Valley, and the relationships between long term environmental change and human adaptation in the Great Lakes. His recent book with G. W. Monaghan addresses issues of site preservation on the floodplains of southern Michigan, taking a geoarchaeological perspective. He is currently engaged in collaborative multidisciplinary and inter-institutional research analyzing the formation processes of stratified archaeological sites in the coastal dune complexes of Lake Michigan.

Dylan Miner is an artist, critic, and historian interested in the complexities of culture in contemporary society. Originally from Michigan's Thumb, Dylan is an Assistant Professor in the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities, as well as Core Faculty in Chicano/Latino Studies. He is Metis and active in the Campesino Collective, Just Seeds Collective, and the Aboriginal Curatorial Collective. Dylan's interests focus on the cultural practices of anti-capitalist and anti-colonial struggle. He is particularly interested in Indigenous critical theory, as well as Native, Chicana/o, and Latin American cultural expressions. Dylan has published articles in Latina/o and Native community newspapers, in addition to academic journals and encyclopedias. Recently, Dylan's artwork has been exhibited at the Institute for American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, La Galer de la Raza in San Francisco, the Cherokee Heritage Center in Oklahoma, and the Art Museum of Southwest Manitoba.

Mindy Morgan (Anthropology) Research and teaching specialization includes North American Indian languages, language pedagogy, literacy and ideology and ethnohistory. Morgan works extensively with the Anishnabemowin (Ojibwe Language) projects on campus and is active in issues of Language revitalization and preservation among Native Peoples. Dr. Morgan teaches courses in Native North American Ethnography, Language and Culture, and special topics in Native North American languages. She hopes to develop more courses regarding both contemporary Native American communities and topics such as literacy and language endangerment.

Robert McKinley (Religious Studies) Principal scholarly interests include: Religion patterns in South East Asia, including indigenous Anthropology and ritual; trends within Malaysian Islam; revival of Native American ritual.

Faculty Bios Continued