NAISA Council

Kevin Bruyneel, PhD, is a Professor of Politics at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts. His book, Settler Memory: The Disavowal of Indigeneity and the Politics of Race in the United States, was published in the Critical Indigeneities Series of the University of North Carolina Press in 2021. He presently writes on the relationship between race, colonialism, collective memory, and racial capitalism. He has published articles in History & Memory, Settler Colonial Studies, Native American and Indigenous Studies Journal, and The Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy. His first book was The Third Space of Sovereignty: The Postcolonial Politics of U.S.-Indigenous Relations (2007).

Professor Bruyneel is of settler ancestry, born and raised in Vancouver, British Columbia, the traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. At Babson College, Bruyneel teaches courses in Political Theory, American Politics, Critical Race Studies, Indigenous Studies, and Radical Politics.

– from the Babson College website

TERM EXPIRES 2024

TERM EXPIRES 2025

Nick Estes (Kul Wicasa), PhD, is a citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe and was born-and-raised in Chamberlain, South Dakota, next to relative Mni Sose (the Missouri River). His nation is the Octet Sakowin Oyate (the Great Sioux Nation or the Nation of the Seven Council Fires). Dr. Estes holds a PhD in American Studies from the University of New Mexico, and Bachelorʻs and Masterʻs degrees in history from the University of South Dakota and has joined the faculty in the Department of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota to begin Fall of 2022. Prior to joining the University of Minnesota, Dr. Estes was an assistant professor of American Studies at the University of New Mexico. He was an American Democracy Fellow at the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard University in 2017–2018.

Dr. Estes is the author of Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance (Verso, 2019). He served as coeditor with Jaskiran Dhillon for the compilation Standing with Standing Rock: Voices from the #NoDAPL Movement (University of Minnesota Press, 2019), and coauthor with Melanie K. Yazzie, Jennifer Nez Denetdale, and David Correia of Red Nation Rising: From Bordertown Violence to Native Liberation (PM Press, 2021). In 2014, Estes cofounded The Red Nation, an Indigenous resistance organization, and he is cohost of The Red Nation podcast. His writing has appeared in The Guardian, The Intercept, Jacobin, Indian Country Today, High Country News, and other publications, and is also part of the collective for Abolition: A Journal of Insurgent Politics. His advocacy and research focus on Indigenous resistance, anti-colonialism, abolition, decolonization, and anti-capitalism.

LIZA BLACK (Cherokee Nation) Indiana University

Liza Black is a citizen of Cherokee Nation. Black is completing her book manuscript: How to Get Away with Murder: A Transnational History of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. How to Get Away with Murder provides six case studies of a two-spirit person, five women and one girl, arguing that the current crisis is a historic reflection of settler colonial relations with Indigenous people. Black is an Associate Professor of History and Native American and Indigenous Studies at Indiana University. In 2020, Black published Picturing Indians: Native Americans in Film, a deeply archival book making the argument that mid-century Native people navigated the complexities of inhabiting filmic representations of themselves as a means of survivance. Black has received several research grants over her career, including the pre-, doc and post-doc fellowships from the Ford Foundation; the Institute of American Cultures at UCLA fellowship; and the Cherokee Nation Higher Education Grant. She serves on council for both the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association and the Western History Association. She is the Series Editor for New Directions in Native American Studies at University of Oklahoma Press and is creating a new course on Native people and the carceral state.

KATRINA M. PHILLIPS (Red Cliff Ojibwe), Macalester College

Katrina M. Phillips, PhD, was born and raised in northern Wisconsin as a proud citizen of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe. She holds a BA in History and a PhD in History from the University of Minnesota. She spent two years as a Consortium for Faculty Diversity fellow at Macalester College before joining the faculty, where she’s currently an associate professor of Native history and the history of the American West. 

Her first book, Staging Indigeneity: Salvage Tourism and the Performance of Native American History (UNC Press, 2021), won the Theatre Library Association Book Awards 2021 George Freedley Memorial Award for an exemplary work in the field of live performance. Her writing has been published in the Washington Post’s “Made By History” section, and she’s appeared on 1A on NPR, Native America Calling, “Morning Edition,” and MPR News. She works as a historical and cultural consultant, and she’s also the author of several children’s books, including Indigenous Peoples’ Day (Traditions and Celebrations) (2022 American Indian Library Association Youth Literature Award Middle Grade Honor Book), The Disastrous Wrangel Island Expedition, and Indigenous Peoples: Super SHEroes of History (Women Who Made a Difference). Her current research focuses on activism, environmentalism, and tourism on and around the Red Cliff Reservation. 

LEILANI BASHAM (Kānaka Maoli), University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa

Leilani Basham, PhD, is Kānaka Maoli with genealogical connections to the islands of O‘ahu and Kaua‘i. She has a multi-disciplinary background that includes Hawaiian Studies focusing on Traditional Society (BA, 1992), Hawaiian Language (Certificate, 1993), History of the Pacific Islands (MA, 2002), and Political Science (PhD, 2007), all from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. Outside of the academy, Leilani also spent 15 years as a student of Hula (Hawaiian dance), graduating as a Kumu Hula, and establishing a small Hālau Hula (private academy), teaching mākua (adults) and keiki (children). She taught Hawaiian language for over 20 years at UH-Mānoa and at the UH-West Oʻahu campus, and is currently an Associate Professor at Kamakakūokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies at UH-Mānoa where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in Mo‘olelo ‘Ōiwi (Native Hawaiian History and Literature) and Hālau o Laka (Creative Expression). Her research interests include mele lāhui (nationalist poetry, music) and mo‘olelo wahi pana (histories and literatures on cultural sites, places), and other topics grounded in ‘ōlelo Hawai‘i (Hawaiian language) and kuana ‘ike Hawai‘i (Hawaiian knowledge and perspective).

FORMER OFFICERS

FORMER COUNCIL MEMBERS