Executive Committee
Kent Blansett is a Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Shawnee, and Potawatomi descendant from the Blanket, Panther, and Smith families. He is the Langston Hughes Associate Professor of Indigenous Studies and History at the University of Kansas. Professor Blansett also serves as the founder and executive director for the American Indian Digital History Project. He has published numerous articles and book chapters including When the Stars Fell from the Sky: The Cherokee Nation and Autonomy during the Civil War and San Francisco, Red Power, and the Emergence of an Indian City. His book, A Journey to Freedom: Richard Oakes, Alcatraz, and the Red Power Movement highlights Oakes’s pivotal role in Red Power activism from the 1960s and 1970s that sparked Native liberation movements throughout North America. Blansett’s book has garnered national attention.
Natural resources management for American Indian and Alaskan Natives; energy sovereignty for American Indian tribes and Alaskan Natives; the Federally Recognized Tribal Extension Program (FRTEP), Indian land tenure; and how local/regional Indigenous knowledge informs state/federal natural resources management offices.
Dr. Ignacio Carvajal specializes in interdisciplinary research on Mesoamerican Literatures, Languages, and Cultures and pedagogical approaches to Indigenous Languages instruction. He focuses on Mayan Languages from Guatemala, particularly K’iche’.
Semantics, the grammar of discourse, and Native American languages.
Native/Indigenous film and media; new media poetics; transmedia activism; critical health studies.
Research Areas: genomics, population genetics, ancient DNA, anthropological genetics, human evolution and population history, migration, bioarchaeology, scientific literacy, North America, Arctic
