Aulii Mitchell (Ka `ohana o Keawehiku, Kanaka maoli, Native Hawaiian) is a Kumu Hula and Cultural Anthropologist. He was raised in the traditions of hula `ōlapa, or the ancient dance, under the guidance of his mother Kumu Hula Harriet Aana Cash and his grandfather Charles Kahiwahiwa Cash. Today, he continues passing down these living traditions to indigenous communities at home and around the world. Kumu Aulii earned his bachelor’s degree in anthropology from the University of Hawaii, Hilo, and a master’s degree in Applied Indigenous Knowledge in Tāmaki Makarau, New Zealand, the only person in the United States to hold this degree. He is a distinguished lecturer, educator, keynote speaker, author, artist, coordinator, producer, and kumu hula of both Hālau ʻo Kahiwahiwa on the islands of Hawaiʻi and Oʻahu, and their sister hula institution in Aotearoa, Hālau O Moana-nui-a-Kiwa. Kumu Aulii is a recipient of the Luce Indigenous Knowledge Fellowship in 2021, recognized for his past, present, and future work in the realms of the ancient dance of the Hula Kiʻi, the dance of the sacred image or Hawaiian Puppetry. Read Aulii’s fellow profile.
Brooke Niiyogaabawiikwe “Niiyo” Gonzalez (St. Croix Chippewa Indians of Wisconsin) is a Native Language Specialist for the National Indian Education Association. Her work includes PK-12 Ojibwe language medium curriculum development, K-12 Bureau of Indian Education Tribally Controlled Schools administration, Early Education planning and administration, including Head Start, tribal education program administration, local, state, and federal advocacy for language revitalization. All of this she has done in service to the revitalization of Native languages. She is currently serving in a broader capacity as the Native Language Specialist for the National Indian Education Association, where she has the opportunity to advocate for protective policies for Native language growth, as well as develop the leadership and community capacity for Native language development. She completed her bachelor’s degree at Dartmouth College, her master’s degree at Harvard University Graduate School of Education, and is currently completing her doctoral studies at the University of Hawai‘i Hilo’s Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikōlani College of Hawaiian Language, where her research, writing, and presenting is directly related to her Luce Fellowship focus: an Indigenous values based approach to leadership development. Niiyo is a recipient of the Luce Indigenous Knowledge Fellowship in 2021. Read Niiyo’s fellow profile.
Gimiwan Dustin Burnette (Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe) is an Ojibwe language immersion educator and nonprofit entrepreneur committed to revitalizing the Ojibwe language. Since 2009, Gimiwan has worked for and with several Ojibwe language immersion schools across Minnesota and Wisconsin. He is the founder of the Midwest Indigenous Immersion Network (MIIN), a community-based organization that promotes and facilitates collaboration between Ojibwe language revitalization efforts in the region. Gimiwan is also a Subject Matter Expert for Rosetta Stone Ojibwe.
Heather Ahtone (Choctaw/Chickasaw Nation) serves as Curatorial Affairs Director at First Americans Museum (FAM) in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, where she has worked since 2018. Having worked in the Native arts community since 1993, she has established a career as a curator, arts writer, and cultural researcher. Her service to the Indigenous cultural community includes participation on numerous advisory boards and in professional capacities that advocate on behalf of Indigenous knowledge, museum practice, and scholarship in the field. This includes the Native American Art Studies Association and the American Art Journal editorial boards. Her current research explores the intersection between Indigenous cultural knowledge and contemporary arts. Her education has included an associate degree in creative writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts, bachelor’s degree in printmaking at the University of Oklahoma, master’s degree in art history, and a doctoral degree in interdisciplinary studies (art history, anthropology, Native American studies).
Jordan Dresser (Northern Arapaho) is from the Wind River Indian Reservation in central Wyoming and is a filmmaker. He graduated from the University of Wyoming with a Bachelor of Arts in journalism and a Master of Arts in museum studies from the University of San Francisco. Dresser previously served as the Chairman of the Northern Arapaho Tribe. He is a filmmaker and his films include: What Was Ours, Home from School: the Children of Carlisle, and The Art of Home, and his most recent film, Who She Is, which won an Emmy for Best Cultural Documentary. He currently serves as the Curator of Collections at the Fort Collins Museum of Discovery.
Karl Duncan (Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, San Carlos Apache) is the executive director for the Poeh Cultural Center at the Pueblo of Pojoaque. A graduate of the Institute of American Indian Arts, Karl received a BA in Museum Studies and is currently part of the first cohort for the MFA program in Cultural Administration at IAIA. He has worked as the curator for the Buffalo Thunder Resort Art Collection, serves as vice-president of the Continuous Pathways Foundation, and as a board member of Buffalo Thunder Incorporated and Silver Bullet Productions.
Melanie Tallmadge Sainz ( Ho-Chunk Nation of WI) is an artist, cultural arts educator, and arts administrator serving in the capacity of Executive Director of Little Eagle Arts Foundation. Melanie is a mixed-media artist who specializes in the use of porcupine quills in her various portrait, floral, and geometric objects, along with clay tile/mixed media mosaics using locally sourced fibers and clays. Melanie received her Minority Business Management certificate at UW Madison and Art Education degrees from Arizona State University. She has been an artist in residence at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indian and Western Art in Indianapolis, IN, UW Whitewater in Whitewater, WI, Idyllwild Arts Academy in Idyllwild, CA, and, in the fall of 2026, she will be the artist in residence at UW Madison. She’s an exhibiting artist on the Fall Art Tour in south-central WI and has exhibited her work at the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC, the Heard Museum in Phoenix, AZ and the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indian and Western Art in Indianapolis, IN. She currently creates and exhibits her art at Maa Wakacak (Ho-Chunk place name/English translation “sacred land”) art studio located at the former Badger Ordnance lands in Sauk County, WI.
Sarah Hernandez (Sicangu Lakota) is an associate professor of Native American literature at the University of New Mexico. Her work centers on the Oceti Sakowin literary tradition and providing editorial and publishing support to Dakota, Nakota, and Lakota writers. She is the author of We Are the Stars: Colonizing and Decolonizing the Oceti Sakowin Literary Tradition (2023), which contrasts women’s land-based stories with settler-colonial narratives to examine colonialism, nationalism, and gender. A longtime member of the Oceti Sakowin Writers Society, she now serves on the Board of Directors and recently received a Luce grant to work with the Society to develop The Oceti Sakowin Reader for Dakota, Nakota, and Lakota teachers and students.
Teresa Peterson, Utuhu Cistinna Win (Sisseton Wahpeton Dakota), and a citizen of the Upper Sioux Community is an author. Teresa earned her doctorate from the University of Minnesota Duluth. She is the author of award-winning book, Perennial Ceremony: Lessons and Gifts from a Dakota Garden and Grasshopper Girl, and co-author of Voices from Pejuhutazizi: Dakota Stories and Storytellers with her uncle “Super” LaBatte. Her passion is digging in her garden that overlooks the Mni Sota River valley and feeding friends and family.
Tessie Naranjo (Tewa, Santa Clara Pueblo, NM) is a Tewa Pueblo Consultant, and she grew up in Santa Clara Pueblo, where Tewa was the only language spoken. In recent years, however, Tewa has become overshadowed by English. Tessie’s great-grandmother and mother were the two most influential figures in her life, inspiring her lifelong passion for collecting oral Tewa Pueblo memories and helping other Tewa members learn the language. In 2015, Tessie co-authored Khaap’on Tewa Verbs and Pronouns (Santa Clara Tewa Verbs and Pronouns) with three family members. In 2024, she helped co-author Nambi Hii/Dtung (Our Speak-Talk), a bilingual collection of stories written in Tewa and translated into English. Nambi Hii/Dtung was supported by First Nations and created for people in Tessie’s community and four other Tewa-speaking communities who share concerns about language and cultural loss. Tessie remains deeply committed to this work, striving to stem Tewa language loss and ensure the continuation of Tewa culture for future generations. Tessie is a recipient of the Luce Indigenous Knowledge Fellowship in 2022. Read Tessie’s fellow profile.
X̱ʼunei Lance Twitchell (Lingít, Haida, Yupʼik, Sami) is a Professor of Alaska Native Languages at the University of Alaska Southeast, and lives in Juneau with his wife and bilingual children. He speaks and studies the Lingít language, and advocates for Indigenous language reclamation through teaching, program development, legislative changes, and healing. Twitchell is an author of poems, stories, and screenplays, and is a filmmaker, musician, and Northwest Coast artist. Twitchell is an Emmy Award-winning screenwriter who wrote on the PBS show Molly of Denali. His first book of poetry, G̱agaan X̱ʼusyee / Below the Foot of the Sun, is available from the University of Alaska Press and the University Press of Colorado. Dr. Twitchell holds a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Minnesota, a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, and a doctorate in Hawaiian and Indigenous Language and Culture Revitalization from Ka Haka ʻUla o Keʻelikōlani College of Hawaiian Language at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo. His studies are in creating safe language acquisition spaces and building language reclamation movements through the love and brilliance of the Ancestors of the language and by overcoming the horrors of colonization. X̱ʼunei is a recipient of the Luce Indigenous Knowledge Fellowship in 2020. Read X̱ʼunei’s fellow profile.
Raymond Foxworth (Navajo) (Advisor to Committee) joined the Foundation in April 2023 as the Foundation’s inaugural program director for the Indigenous Knowledge Initiative. Prior to joining the Foundation, Raymond served as vice president for First Nations Development Institute, a national Native-led organization that works with Native American communities on community and economic development. Raymond holds a PhD in political science from the University of Colorado at Boulder and has an extensive research background focused on Indigenous politics, democracy and social development in the U.S. and Latin America. In 2021-2022 he served as a visiting scholar in the political science department at the University of New Mexico. He currently serves on the board of directors for the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation and the American Political Science Association. He is a former board member of the Women’s Foundation of Colorado and Native Public Media.
Michael Roberts (Tlingit) is the president and CEO of First Nations Development Institute, a position he was appointed to in 2005 after having served as a research officer and chief operating officer for the organization from 1992 to 1997 and returning to First Nations in 2002. In the interim, Mike spent five years in private equity, during which he advised angel investors and worked for a $500 million telecommunications fund and for an early-stage Midwest venture capital firm. Mike also worked at Alaska Native corporations and for local IRA councils, primarily in accounting and finance. Mike serves on the Board of First Nations Development Institute. Mike’s past service includes board positions for Native Americans in Philanthropy and The Association for Enterprise Opportunity (AEO), as well as on the Advisory Council of the Center for Native American Public Radio, and on the National Advisory Committee for the National Center for Family Philanthropy.