Benét Conlin

Spring 2025
From: Cedar Falls/Waterloo, IA
 
Education: BA in Anthropology and Sociology with a minor in Writing from Drake University
 
Research Interests: I'm very interested in people's life stories and dispelling myths. I had worked with Iowa Community Action Association as a Americorps VISTA sharing client's stories of how Community Action programs helped them. This was important to me as I come from a limited-income household that had utilized some of these programs. I wanted to share the truth of limited-income households. Now I'd like to dispel the myths surrounding Native American/American Indian peoples. 
 
Dawn Delaney-Aimsback

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

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. 

China Soriano

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.

 

Lisa Wright Lamkins

Lisa Wright Lamkins

 
From: Bozeman, MT 
 
Education:
Bachelor of Science in International Business, minor in Western European Studies with French, Spanish, and Portuguese languages, from the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities.
 
Research Interests:
Indigenous entrepreneurship, non-profit organizations, and economic development within Montana’s Native American communities.