Current Graduate Students of the NAS Master of Arts Program
Kaja Anderson
Graduate Teaching Assistant
Spring 2025
From: Fort Peck, MT; Sioux and Assiniboine Nations
Research interests: Native American military service in WWI
Wes Cawood
From: Lancaster, PA
Education: B.S. in Conservation Biology
Research Interest: Decolonizing food systems, food sovereignty, companion ways of knowing
Benét Conlin
Douglas Vance Crooked Arm
Dawn Delaney-Aimsback
From: I am an enrolled member and from the Amskapi Pikuni Nation.
Education: Bachelor of Art - Environmental Studies
Research Interests: Native American Policy and current Native American topics that are of concern of one's culture; the representation of Traditional Ecological Knowledge, the representation of Contemporary Native American issues, and Climate Change adaptation.
Videography and GIS will allow me to highlight language and its relationship to the land, through an interactive educational story map, which I plan to give to the local Tribal College Library. Showcasing the rich and long history within the given landscape, will help guide and educate the next generation and pass on Indigenous ways of knowing, within the Amskapi Pikuni community.
Taylor Pajunen
Graduate Teaching Assistant
Spring 2025
From: Iowa City, Iowa
Non-Native white settler
Education: My community - family, chosen family, organizers, and comrades. Bachelor of Arts in both Anti-Racism Studies and Spanish from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Associates of Arts in Native American Studies at Central Wyoming College.
Research Interests: Taylor spent the past three years in Lander, WY, which is a bordertown to the Wind River Reservation, where she worked with Wind River Pride (a multi-generational, mutli-racial 2SLGBTQIA+ community group) and Wyoming 4 Palestine. Taylor spends their summers in Tuscon, AZ working with a humanitarian aid group at the border called No More Deaths/No Más Muertes and she has spent time in the West Bank, Palestine engaging in international solidarity efforts with Palestinian agriculture workers. Taylor centers Black and Indigenous liberation as a means for collective liberation and hopes to do their research in settler cognitive dissonance in the various bordertowns she has lived and worked in.
Sinai (China) Soriano
Graduate Teaching Assistant
Spring 2025
From: ancestral home of the Chumash, Awha'y (Ojai)
Tribal Affiliation: Chichimec and Tlahuica
Education: Bachelors in Ethnic Studies and Political Science from California State University Channel Islands, Spring 2022 graduate.
Research: radically fueled by ancestors and community, she pursues higher education with research interests relating to the significant impact Indigenous ancestral traditions, knowledge, and ceremony contribute to survival and resilience of Native people.
Zoey Stephens
Welcome to the Department of Native American Studies!
Rebecca Warner
From: Boulder, MT
Research Interests: Preservation and revitalization of Indigenous languages; and combining conventional medical knowledge with plant knowledge for community wellness and food sovereignty.
Lisa Wright Lamkins
Levi Yellowmule
Tribal Affiliation: Crow Nation