Conference Schedule The Religious Origins of White Supremacy: Johnson v. M’Intosh and the Doctrine of Christian Discovery.

Website Note

The printed conference schedeule will have panel locations. The printed schedule is canonical.

Land Acknowledgement

We acknowledge with respect the Onondaga Nation, firekeepers of the Haudenosaunee, the Indigenous peoples on whose ancestral lands Syracuse University now stands.

Description

December 8-10, 2023, Syracuse University

Sponsors

• The Henry Luce Foundation
• Syracuse University
• Religion Department
• Biology Department
• Indigenous Values Initiative
• American Indian Law Alliance
• American Indian Community House
• Good Faith Media (GFM)
• Neighbors of Onondaga Nation (NOON)
• Syracuse Peace Council
• Syracuse Cultural Workers
• Tonatierra
• Toward Our Common Public Life
• Unitarian Universalist Association

Register

Register Now

Conference Hotel

Sheraton Syracuse University Hotel & Conference Center
801 University Avenue, Syracuse, New York, USA, 13210
Tel: +1 315-475-3000

Book your group rate for Indigenous Values Initiative Room Block

Parking

• Friday, December 8th: Parking available in Hillside, College Place, Carnegie lots and Irving garage
• Saturday, December 9th and Sunday, December 10th events:
  • Comstock Avenue Garage, and the following open lots:
  • University Ave. North, University Ave. South and Harrison.

Campus WiFi

1. You need a text-capable mobile phone to complete the process.
2. Connect to the AirOrangeGuest wireless network and wait for the Network Guest Service Portal to open on your device. If it doesn’t open on its own, open your browser to the guest portal.
3. Follow the instructions.

Meals

• Friday dinner is provided at the Skä-noñh Center

• Saturday and Sunday lunch is provided

Book Display

Many of our conference attendees have new or recent books on topics related to the conference. We encourage you to stop by the Syracuse University bookstore display on the first floor of the Hall of Languages. Some of these books will only be easily available at this conference.

Questions

• Find event staff wearing the event lanyard and ask.

• Ask at the info table on the first floor of the Hall of Languages

Classroom technology options

In the Hall of Languages here is what is available technology wise

Navigation

• For a detailed campus map visit maps.syracuse.edu

In the Court of the Conqueror

“In the Court of the Conqueror” written and performed by george emilio sanchez and in collaboration with visual artist Patty Ortiz.

Techical Assistance

• Lights: Jorgen Skjaervold
• Video projections: Patty Ortiz
• Acknowledgements for the program:

Thanks

We especially would like to acknowledge and thank:

• Lauren Parrish-Tech Director for In the Court of the Conqueror
• Andre Bouchard and Indigenous Performance Productions
• The University of Oklahoma’s Indigenous Peoples Law Masters of Legal Studies program

Annotated Bibliography

In the Court of the Conqueror Annotated Bibliography by george emilio sanchez

Tenative Conference Schedule

Detailed Schedule

Panel A101

Syracuse University Discovery and Indigenous Peoples Seminar

• Quinn Pierson, Syracuse University, Chair
• Joss Willsbrough, Syracuse University, “Word Became Flesh” - The DoCD and Sedimented Trauma in the Settler-Colonial Body
• Naimi Pankaj Patel, Syracuse University, Epistemicide
• Shrutika Lakshmi, Syracuse University, Other ways of dwelling: A Dalit Feminist Perspective
• Philip P. Arnold, Syracuse University, Respondent

Panel A102

Confronting Religious Racism Panel

• Danielle Boaz, UNC Charlotte, Chair
• Gustavo Mello Cerqueira, International Commission to Combat Religious Racism
• Charlene Desir, Nova Southeastern University
• João Chaves, Baylor University

Panel A103

Law Panel I: 200 Years of Johnson v. M’Intosh

• Paula Johnson, Syracuse University College of Law, Chair
• Joseph J. Heath, Onondaga Nation General Counsel
• Robert J. Miller, Arizona State University Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law
• Beverly Jacobs, University of Windsor
• Nicolas Robinson, Pace University Elisabeth Haub School of Law

Panel A104

Bishops Panel

• Philip P. Arnold, Syracuse University, Chair
• Rev. Lee M. Miller II
• Bishop Douglas Lucia
• Rt. Rev. Dr. DeDe Duncan-Probe
• Jake Haiwhagai’i Edwards
• Freida J. Jacques, Whatwehni:neh

Panel A105

The impact of the Doctrine in Aotearoa upon wellbeing and Indigenous knowledge

• Tina Ngata, Chair
• Pāpā Mark Kopua
• Diana Kopua
• James Webster
• Hinemoa Jones
• Rikki Solomon
• Bronwyn Williams

Panel A106

Engaged Humanities Network: Engaging the Doctrine of Discovery Beyond the Classroom

• Brice Nordquist, Director of the Engaged Humanities Network, Chair
• Heather Law Pezzarossi, Assistant Professor, Anthropology Department, SU
• Rochele Royster, Assistant Professor, Creative Arts Therapy, SU
• Scott Manning Stevens, Akwesasne Mohawk, Director, Native American and Indigenous Studies, Syracuse University
• Jordan Loewen-Colón, Queens University

Panel A107

Law Panel II: White Christian Desire for the Indigenous and the Logic of Discovery

• Paula Johnson, Syracuse University College of Law, Chair
• Robert J. Miller, Arizona State University Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law
• Dana Lloyd, Villanova University
• Elisha Chi, Villanova University

Panel A108

Indigenous Peoples and Religious Modes of Othering: A History of Religions Perspective

Davíd Carrasco, Harvard University

Panel A109

In the Court of the Conqueror

George Emilio Sanchez

Panel A110

Law Panel III: Federal Anti-Indian Law

• Paula Johnson, Syracuse University College of Law,Chair
• Joseph J. Heath, Onondaga Nation General Counsel
• Steven T. Newcomb, Indigenous Law Institute/Original Free Nations
• Peter d’Errico, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Panel A111

Documenting the Doctrine of Discovery, Mueseums, Libraries & Data Science Part 1

• Philip P. Arnold, Syracuse University, Chair
• Sebastian Modrow, Syracuse University, “Charting the Doctrine in the Colonial Archive: Papal Bulls and the Translation of the ‘Discovery’ Purpose”
• Sean Cunningham, The National Archives (UK), Archival Evidence of Ideology, Trade and Plunder as Motivations in England’s North American Voyages, C.1480-1503

Panel A112

Recognizing Indigenous Rights Inter-nationally

• Nicholas Robinson, Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University, Chair & Panelist
• Chris Sudol, Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University

Panel A113

Spirits Unyielding: Sabotaging the Ideologies of white Christian Supremacy from the US South and the Global South

SOULFORCE

• Rev Alba Onofrio, Appalachia, Western NC (Executive Director)
• Assata de la Cruz, Mobile, Alabama (Director of Community Outreach)
• Karina Vargas, Costa Rica (Director of the Institute on Spiritual Violence, Healing, and Social Change)
• Nadia Arellano, Mexico (Associate Director of Soulforce, and Director of Latin American Programming)

Panel A114

Documenting the Doctrine of Discovery, Museums, Libraries & Data Science Part 2

• Philip P. Arnold, Syracuse University, Chair
• Maeve Callan, Simpson University, “The Medieval Origins of Religious White Supremacy: The King of Tars, Crusade Defeats, and the Doctrine of Discovery”
• James Adams, National Museum of the American Indian - Smithsonian, “Pre-History of the “Doctrine of Christian Discovery”; Nicholas V and the English Eruption into the North Atlantic”
• Jordan Loewen-Colón, Queens University, “Unveiling the Digital Doctrine of Discovery: Lessons from the Taino Encounter for Contemporary Data Society”
• Sandy Bigtree, Indigenous Values Initiative

Panel A115

Faith & Land Justice: Repairing the Harms of the Doctrine of Christian Discovery

• Pat McCabe, (Diné)
• Sarah Bradley, Nuns & Nones Land Justice Project
• Sarah Augustine, (Tewa), Dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery Coalition
• Rick Ufford-Chase, Center for Jubilee Practice
• Sarah Bradley, Nuns & Nones Land Justice Project

Panel A116

The Religious Origins of White Supremacy: Johnson v. M’Intosh and the Doctrine of Christian Discovery.

• Betty Lyons, American Indian Law Alliance, Chair
• Oren Lyons, Onondaga Nation
• Robert P. Jones,The Public Religion Research Institute
• Anthea Butler,University of Pennsylvania

Panel A117

Māori Performance: Tēnei Te Põ Nau Mai Te Ao: Ancient Māori Puppetry Healing Traumatic Histories

• Poetry: Tina Ngata, Bronwyn Williams
• Storytelling: Papa Mark Kopua, Dr. Di Kopua
• Instrumentalists: James Webster, Hinemoa Jones, Rikki Solomon
• Karetao Puppetry: James Webster, Hinemoa Jones

Panel A118

Traditional Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address Closing

Panel B101

The Religious Origins of January 6th: Fear, Otherness, and White Supremacy

• Joel Harrison, Northern Virginia Community College, Chair
• Students of Northern Virginia Community College

Panel B102

Political Theologies of Discovery

• Naimi Patel, Syracuse University, Chair
• Cara Peacock, University of Toronto, Settler Colonial Christianity: Unravelling the Political Theologies of Settler Statecraft and Colonial Violence
• Colin Bossen, First Unitarian Universalist Church of Houston, The Political Theology of Replacement Theory
• Pranay Somayajula, Hindus for Human Rights, “Hindu Political Theology: Beyond Hindutva’s Political Monotheism”

Panel B105

Challenging Christianization and Civilization Narratives

• Fatma Celik, Syracuse University, Chair
• Sandra Klein, Université de Liège, “Religion as a Tool for Racist Subjugation and Black Liberation in Robert Jones, Jr.’s The Prophets (2021)”
• Jason Long Youngstown State University ““Christianized and Civilized”: Protestant Missionaries and American Hegemony in Hawai‘i, 1820-1898”
• Kenneth Chestek,University of Wyoming, “The Myth of Divine Right and the Doctrine of Discovery”
• CK Raju, (Honorary Professor) Indian Institute of Education, G. D. Parikh Centre, J. P. Naik Bhavan, University of Mumbai, Kalina Campus, “White supremacy: its religious roots, and what must be done to eradicate it today”

Panel B106

International Dimensions of the Doctrine of Discovery Panel I

Lars Kirkhusmo Pharo,Nord University, Chair

• Lars Kirkhusmo Pharo, Nord University, “Intellectual Diversity and Complexity in “Terra Nullius” Methodology of Comparative History of Religions and Ideas”
• Tove Mentse Ness, Nord University, “‘We tried to take care of her, but it got too exhausting.’ A study of the transition from family carer to employer”

Panel B107

Land Panel I: Devestated Landscapes and Eco-Justice

• Terry Reeder, Syracuse University, Chair
• Luke Henkel,Laudato Si Movement, “Chi’chil Bildagoteel, the Doctrine of Discovery, and Religious Freedom: Unprecedented Challenges and Opportunities”
• Renée Barry and Danielle Nagle, The Matilda Joslyn Gage Center and Erie Canal Museum Fellowship, “On “Deconstruction” of the Erie Canal”
• Franklyn Telles, Northern Arizona University, “Columbine Lake Discovers Dust caused by Colonization”

Panel B110

International Dimensions of the Doctrine of Discovery Panel II

• Sara Shute, Indigenous Values Initiative, Chair
• S. Lily Mendoza, Oakland University, “An Unholy Wedding: Christianity, Civilizational Supremacy and the In/visibility of “Race” in Post-colonial Philippines”
• Eglute Trinkauskaite, Maryland Institute College of Art, “Christian Nationalism in the Lithuanian context”
• Telma Alencar, York University, “Silencing the Doctrine of Discovery in Brazil”
• Robert J. Miller, Arizona State University Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, “Nazi Germany’s Race Laws, the United States, and American Indians”

Panel B111

Land Panel II: Narratives for Collective Survival

• Jonathan Nahar, Independent Scholar, Chair
• Sarah Nahar, Syracuse University / SUNY ESF, “Using the Doctrine of Discovery to increase shared language and conceptual frameworks for Black feminist and Indigenous feminist organizing”
• Sara Jolena Wolcott and Sequoia Samanvaya, “Changing the Origin Story: Discovery, Climate Change, Racism, and Eco-theologies for collective survival”
• Wendy Felese, Montana State University-Billings, “The Chosen People at Grouse Mountain”

Panel B112

New Books in the Study of Domination

• Adam DJ Brett, Syracuse University, Chair
• Philip P. Arnold, Syracuse University
• Danielle Boaz, UNC Charlotte
• João Chaves, Baylor University
• Andrea Smith, Lafayette College
• Tina Ngata,
• Dana Lloyd, Villanova University
• Victor Valle, California Polytechnic State University

Panel B113

Using the Two Row Wampum Method at the Vatican

• Philip P.Arnold, Syracuse University, Chair & Panelist
• Sandra Bigtree, Indigenous Values Initiative
• Betty Lyons, American Indian Law Alliance
• Sebastian Modrow, Syracuse University
• Adam DJ Brett, American Indian Law Alliance / Syracuse University

Panel B114

Confronting Religious Racism Workshop

• Danielle Boaz, UNC Charlotte, Chair
• Gustavo Melo, Cerqueira, International Commission to Combat Religious Racism
• Charlene Desir, Nova Southeastern University
• Danielle Boaz, UNC Charlotte

Panel B115

Conference Reflection and Next Steps

• Philip P. Arnold, Syracuse University
• Danielle Boaz, UNC Charlotte

Panel C101

The Story of the Empty Cradleboard Mandate: Indigenous Delegates to Vatican Discuss Lessons Learned and Next Steps After Repudiation

• Mommabear, Wakerakats:te Bear Clan Mother, Mohawk Nation
• Michelle Schenandoah, Kaluhyanu:wes
  Oneida Nation & Rematriation, Founder
• Jonel Beauvais, Kaianenhawis Mohawk Nation, Mother & Community Member
• Chief Gerald Antoine Dene Nation & Assembly of First Nations Regional Chief
• Leanne Goose, Senior Policy Advisor - Dene Nation/Assembly of First Nationals Northwest Territories.

Panel C102

Christian Control of Women and Mother Earth: The Doctrine of Discovery and The Doctrine of Male Dominion

• Terry Reeder, Syracuse University, Chair
• Sandy Bigtree, Indigenous Values Initiative
• Sally Roesch Wagner, Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation
• Terry Reeder, Syracuse University

Panel C105

Pupils in the professed Lands: Confronting White Supremacy Across the Disciplines

• Michael Chaness, SUNY Oswego, Chair
• Roberta Hurtado, SUNY Oswego (English)
• Celinet Duran-Jimenez, SUNY Oswego (Criminal Justice),
• Ritu Radhakrishnan, SUNY Oswego (Education),
• Terrian Garvis (Triandiflou Institute)

Panel C106

Catholicism and the Doctrine of Discovery

• Eglute Trinkauskaite, Maryland Institute College of Art, Chair
• Jeannine Hill Fletcher, Fordham University, “Partners in Resistance and Repair: Using Brave Heart’s Method to Leverage Resources from Historically White-Serving Catholic Institutions”
• Tiffany Hunsinger, University of Dayton, “Our Lady of the Sioux: The Role of Mary as Propaganda for Stealing Indigenous Land and Children”
• Valentin Lopez, Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, “The Doctrine of Discovery’s Genocidal Impact on the California Mission System”

Panel C107

International Dimensions of the Doctrine of Discovery Panel III: International Human Rights

• Shrutika Lakshmi, Syracuse University, Chair
• Adam DJ Brett, American Indian Law Alliance
• Betty Lyons, American Indian Law Alliance
• Eve Reyes Aguirre, Tonatierra
• Marina Johnson-Zafiris, Cornell University, “Holy Hydro: Sherrill’s application to the Mohawk Land Claim”

Panel C110

Contesting White Christian Nationalism

• Joss Willsbrough, Syracuse University, Chair
• James (Jim) Perkinson,Ecumenical Theological Seminary,Routing Out Supremacy’s Religious Roots From Skin Color Back Through Bible Code to City-State Coercion
• Jonathan Nahar, “The DoCD White Christian Nationalism, and Palestine”
• Mitch Randall, Good Faith Media

Panel C113

SUNYESF

SUNY ESF Diversity and Knowledge of the Environment Class

Students welcome you to take a gallery walk around the room to talk with them about their final class posters, featuring ways the Doctrine of Christian Discovery is still operating, and ways it is being resisted by humans and the more-than-human.

Panel C114

Colonial Words Creating Worlds

• Brianna Svitak, Syracuse University, Chair
• Randy Kritkausky, ECOLOGIA, “Untangling Ourselves from The Doctrine of Discovery”
• Jonathan Brackens, University of Massachusetts School of Law, “The Hays Between Scroggs and Smith: A Quantitative Integrative Review of Personal Jurisdiction In Romans 1 Legal Exegesis And Its Racial Implications On Christian Gentile Homonegative Doctrines”
• Victor Valle, California Polytechnic State University, Toward a Poetics of Chile…in another Mexico

Panel C115

Contextualizing Domination through Intellectual History

• Dillon Sampson, Syracuse University, Chair
• Xavier Fitzsimmons Cruz, New York University, Bartolomé de las Casas, Theodicy and the ecclesiastical struggle against colonialism in the Americas.
• Andrea Smith, Lafayette College, “Making White Space: Staking Land Claims through Historical Markers”
• Katie Peters, University of Connecticut, “The Mutual Construction of Religion, Women’s Rights, and KKK Propaganda: Bishop Alma Bridwell White”

Panel D111

Witness to Injustice Program

Neighbors of Onondaga Nation (NOON)

Speaker Bios

if you would like your bio included please email your short bio to [email protected]

James Adams

James Adams is the Fellowhship Coordinator at the National Museum of the American Indian - Smithsonian. He holds a PhD from Cornell University. His work focuses on the contact period and impact on European political theory, as determinant of subsequent legal and ideological framework for interaction with Native population; Emphasis on 16th century Spanish debate culminating in Valladolid disputation; 17th century English religious and economic exploitation culminating in John Locke; 18th century French narratives culminating in Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Telma Alencar

MA Social Anthropology/Ph.D. Social & Political Thought in progress at York University, Canada.

Telma’s research focuses on identifying the intersections of the Doctrine of Discovery with the destruction of one of the world’s most important ecosystems - the Amazon forest, through the ongoing violence against indigenous people in Brazil for the exploitation of natural resources for profit.

Telma’s research draws on neocolonialism studies as a theoretical framework, also focusing on intersections between Christianity and Global Capitalism, aiming at shedding light on the Doctrine of Discovery’s effects and legacy related to the Global South, specifically to Brazilian Indigenous communities.

Chief Gerald Antoine

Dene National Chief/AFN NWT Regional Chief

Nadia Arellano

Soulforce

Nadia Arellano Tapia is an intercultural facilitator from Mexico City with a background in human rights and feminist theologies. Nadia accompanies the family members of victims of violence, and also works with feminist women of faith and religious communities open to the LGBTIQA+ community as they mobilize against religious fundamentalisms and spiritual violence. She is passionate about learning, asking questions, reading, and thinking aloud with others.

Philip P. Arnold

Dr. Philip P. Arnold, Associate Professor in the Department of Religion at Syracuse University. Associate Professor and Chair of Religion Department at Syracuse University as well as core faculty in Native American and Indigenous Studies.  He is the Founding Director of the Skä-noñh—the Great Law of Peace Center (www.skanonhcenter.org).  His books are Eating Landscape: Aztec and European Occupation of Tlalocan (1999); Sacred Landscapes and Cultural Politics: Planting a Tree (2001); The Gift of Sports: Indigenous Ceremonial Dimensions of the Games We Love (2012) and Urgency of Indigenous Values and the Future of Religion (University of New Mexico Press, forthcoming).  He is a founding member of Neighbors of the Onondaga Nation (NOON), (www.peacecouncil.net/NOON/) and established the Doctrine of Discovery Study Group (www.doctrineofdiscovery.org) He is President of the Indigenous Values Initiative (www.indigenousvalues.org), a non-profit organization to support the educational work of the Skä-noñh—Great Law of Peace Center.

Sarah Augustine

Sarah Augustine, who is a Pueblo (Tewa) descendant, is co- founder and Executive Director of the Coalition to Dismantle the Doctrine of Discovery. She is also the co-founder of Suriname Indigenous Health Fund (SIHF), where she has worked in relationship with vulnerable Indigenous Peoples since 2005. She has represented the interests of Indigenous community partners to their own governments, the Inter-American development bank, the United Nations, the Organization of American States Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the World Health Organization, and a host of other international actors including corporate interests. She is a columnist for Anabaptist World, and co-hosts the Dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery podcast with Sheri Hostetler. She has taught at Heritage University, Central Washington University, and Goshen College. In Washington State, where she lives, she serves in a leadership role on multiple boards and commissions to enable vulnerable peoples to speak for themselves in advocating for structural change. She and her husband, Dan Peplow, and their son live in the Yakima Valley of Washington. She is author of the book “The Land Is Not Empty: Following Jesus in Dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery” (Herald Press 2021).

Renée Barry

with the Matilda Joslyn Gage Center, Erie Canal Museum fellowship

Jonel Beauvais

Kanien’keha:ka (Mohawk), Wolf Clan

Sandy Bigtree

Sandy Bigtree, (Mohawk Nation), Founding Board Member of the Indigenous Values Initiative. www.indigenousvalues.org With Philip Arnold, organized the: “Roots of Peacemaking” educational festivals at Onondaga Lake (2006-2007); the “Doctrine of Discovery Conference” in 2014; Co-edited the Neighbors of the Onondaga Nation (NOON) educational booklet. She was an original Planning Committee member of Skä-noñh—the Great Law of Peace Center and currently sits on the Educational Collaborative committee. 1984-85, she was the Administrative Assistant to the American Indian Law Support Center at NARF in Boulder, CO, where she learned the stark difference between Indigenous Nationhood, “Federal Indian Law.” In 1980-82 performed with Native Americans in the Arts theatre troupe (an affiliate of the American Indian Community House) at LaMama, NYC, and toured the NE. From age 1-30, Sandy performed weekly on radio, TV with her sisters, and fronted her own band through the 1970s.

Danielle Boaz

Danielle N. Boaz is an Associate Professor of Africana Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where she offers courses on human rights, social justice, and the law. She has a Ph.D. in history with a specialization in Africa and the African Diaspora; a J.D. with a concentration in International Law; and a LL.M. in Intercultural Human Rights. She is Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Africana Religions. Boaz’s research focuses on the intersection of racism and religious intolerance, with an emphasis on discrimination and violence against devotees of African diaspora religions.

Colin Bossen

An award winning preacher, scholar and social justice organizer, I serve as the senior minister of the First Unitarian Universalist Church, Houston, Texas. From February 2022 to January 2023, I was a Community Stories Fellow with the Crossroads Project, affiliated with Princeton University’s Center for Culture, Society, and Religion. Prior to that, from 2018 to 2020, I was an African American Religious Studies Forum Affiliate with Rice University’s Center for Engaged Research and Collaborative Learning. My MDiv. is from Meadville Lombard Theological School. I have a PhD in American Studies and an AM in History from Harvard University where I wrote a dissertation on the relationship between theology and populism. Dan McKanan and Mayra Rivera Rivera were my advisors, Lisa McGirr was my third reader, and Sylvester Johnson served as my outside reader. I completed my undergraduate studies at Denison University.

Jonathan Brackens

University of Massachusetts School of Law

Sarah Bradley (she/her)

Co-Founder, Director of Movement-Building, Nuns & Nones

A popular educator and community organizer, Sarah focuses on building movement partnerships, internal/external alignment, and strategic direction for the Nuns & Nones Land Justice Project, as well as supporting the design and development of our programs. Sarah was part of the founding team of Nuns & Nones and is a member of that emergent covenantal community. Previously, she co-founded the Open Master’s, an initiative supporting lifelong learners in the emancipatory tradition of popular education, and Alt*Div, a 2-year experiment in creating a grassroots alternative to divinity school for artists, activists, and community builders. After a decade+ in the Bay Area, she currently lives on Tewa lands in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she gets to love and be loved by the Bosque and Rio Grande and is dangerously close to getting a cat.

Adam DJ Brett

Adam DJ Brett earned his Ph.D. in religion from Syracuse University July 2022. His area of specialization is the religion, media and culture with attention to mass media and the diffuse influence of U.S. Protestant Fundamentalism on media, culture, business, and politics during the early 20th century. He is also interested in the efforts of Indigenous nations and peoples to oppose the Doctrine of Discovery. Both projects allow him to anchor his work within the sub-disciplines of critical theories of religion and American religious history with careful attention to discourses of identity and power. He has worked for the American Indian Law Alliance (aila.ngo) since 2016. As a student of religion, he is interested in the impact of the Doctrine of Discovery, religious freedom, and how religion gets understood through law. Additionally, he is the grant & event coordinator for the Doctrine of Discovery Project with Professor Philip P. Arnold who is the Principal Investigator. The project is funded in part by the Henry Luce Grant “200 Years of Johnson v. McIntosh.”

Anthea Butler

Anthea Butler is Geraldine R. Segal Professor in American Social Thought, and chair of the department of Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. A historian of African American and American religion, Professor Butler’s research and writing spans African American religion and history, race, politics, Evangelicalism, gender and sexuality, media, and popular culture. You can find more of her writing and public engagement at Antheabutler.com

Professor Butler courses include Religion from Civil Rights to Black lives Matter, Religion in the African Diaspora, God and Money, Religion and American Politics, and Ritual and Practice in Religious Studies. She is a member of the graduate group in the History department at Penn. 

Butler’s recent book is White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America.  Her first book is Women in the Church of God in Christ: Making A Sanctified World, Both are published by Ferris and Ferris/UNC Press. Her next book project in progress is Reading Race: How Publishing created a lifeline for Black Baptists in Post Reconstruction America.

Podcast interview with Dr. Butler

Mary Burke

Professor of English at University of Connecticut and UConn Irish Literature Concentration Coordinator. Work has placed with NPR, the Irish Times, RTÉ, and Faber. Former U of Notre Dame Irish Institute NEH Fellow, MLA Irish Literature Committee chair, and a 2022 Trinity College Dublin LHR Fellow. Graduate of TCD and Queen’s University Belfast. Faculty Profile

Maeve Callan

Maeve Callan is the Simpson College Department Chair of Religion, Co-Director of the Interfaith Fellows Program and Professor of Religion.

I am the historian in our department, as well as the main “World Religions” professor. My first book, The Templars, the Witch, and the Wild Irish (2015), published by Cornell University Press and Four Courts Press, explores Ireland’s handful of heresy trials, their role in the colonization of the island by the English, and their relationship to heresy and witchcraft prosecution in Britain and on the Continent. My second, Sacred Sisters (2020), focuses on gender, sanctity, and power in medieval Ireland, and is the first book in Amsterdam University Press’s new “Hagiography Beyond Tradition” series. My current project examines the intersections between religion, ethnic identity, and racism in the British Isles between 1000 and 1500. With Rev. Mara Bailey, I co-direct Simpson’s Interfaith Fellows Program, which helps cultivate greater understanding and constructive engagement with religious diversity as it helps students develop leadership skills and abilities.

Davíd Carrasco

Davíd Carrasco (Neil L. Rudenstine Professor of the Study of Latin America) is a Mexican American historian of religions with particular interest in Mesoamerican cities as symbols, and the Mexican-American borderlands. His studies with historians of religions at the University of Chicago inspired him to work on the question, “where is your sacred place,” on the challenges of postcolonial ethnography and theory, and on the practices and symbolic nature of ritual violence in comparative perspective. Working with Mexican archaeologists, he has carried out research in the excavations and archives associated with the sites of Teotihuacan and Mexico-Tenochtitlan resulting in Religions of Mesoamerica, City of Sacrifice, and Quetzalcoatl and the Irony of Empire. An award-winning teacher, he has participated in spirited debates at Harvard with Cornel West and Samuel Huntington on the topics of race, culture, and religion in the Americas. He also directs the Moses Mesoamerican Archive and Research Project at Harvard University.

Recent collaborative publications include Breaking Through Mexico’s Past: Digging the Aztecs With Eduardo Matos Moctezuma (2007), Mysteries of the Maya Calendar Museum (2012) with Laanna Carrasco, and Cave, City, and Eagle’s Nest: An Interpretive Journey Through the Mapa de Cuauhtinchan No. 2 (2007; gold winner of the 2008 PubWest Book Design Award in the academic book/nontrade category) recently featured in The New York Review of Books.

His work has included a special emphasis on the religious dimensions of Latino experience: mestizaje, the myth of Aztlan, transculturation, and La Virgen de Guadalupe. He is co-producer of the film Alambrista: The Director’s Cut, which puts a human face on the life and struggles of undocumented Mexican farm workers in the United States, and he edited Alambrista and the U.S.-Mexico Border: Film, Music, and Stories of Undocumented Immigrants (University of New Mexico Press). He is editor-in-chief of the award-winning three-volume Oxford Encyclopedia of Mesoamerican Cultures. His most recent publication is a new abridgement of Bernal Díaz del Castillo’s memoir of the conquest of Mexico, History of the Conquest of New Spain (University of New Mexico Press).

Carrasco has received the Mexican Order of the Aztec Eagle, the highest honor the Mexican government gives to a foreign national. He was chosen as the University of Chicago Alumnus of the Year in 2014.

Podcast interview with Dr. Carrasco

Fatma Celik

Syracuse University

Gustavo Melo Cerqueira

Gustavo Melo Cerqueira, Babalorixá of Ilê Axé Omi Ogun siwajú, Vice Preisdent of the International Commission to Combat Religious Racism. He is a babalorixá of Ilê Axé Omi, an actor, and a performer. He holds a PhD in African and African diaspora studies.

Michael E. Chaness

Dr. Michael E. Chaness – I am currently a visiting assistant professor at SUNY-Oswego where I teach courses in Anthropology and Native American Studies. Previous to that appointment I earned my Ph.D. in the department of religion at Syracuse University under the tutelage of Dr. Philip Arnold. It was while living in Syracuse that I began to collaborate with onkwehonwe peoples. Throughout my graduate studies I worked simultaneously at the Onondaga Nation School and the relationships I cultivated at ONS lead directly to many years of (ongoing) informal fieldwork. My scholarship explores the intersections between Jewish American and Native American identity creation through the prisms of blood and land, philosophy and theology, gender and genocide, religion and ritual. I see this conference as an opportunity to focus attention on the insidiousness of the doctrine of Christian discovery so that we may uproot, expose, and begin to dismantle the legacies of white supremacy that have become entrenched throughout America’s religious, legal, and political institutions. May this process, as our Haudenosaunee friends say, bring our minds together as one.

João Chaves

João B. Chaves joined the Department of Religion at Baylor University in the fall semester of 2023. His research focuses on the history of religion in the Américas, the influence of U.S. Protestantism in Latin America, and the development of Latin American/Latinx religious networks in the United States. Dr. Chaves is an award-winning author whose books include Migrational Religion: Context and Creativity in the Latinx Diaspora (Baylor University Press, 2021), The Global Mission of the Jim Crow South: Southern Baptist Missionaries and the Shaping of Latin American Evangelicalism (Mercer University Press, 2022), and Remembering Antônia Teixeira: A Story of Missions, Violence, and Institutional Hypocrisy (Eerdmans, 2023), co-authored with Dr. Mikeal Parsons. Dr. Chaves also co-edited a book with Dr. T. Laine Scales, titled Baptists and the Kingdom of God: Global Perspectives (Baylor University Press, 2023). His peer-review articles appear in several academic journals, such as The International Journal of Latin American Religions, The Journal of Reformed Theology, Political Theology, Review and Expositor, Perspectives in Religious Studies, and Baptist History and Heritage.

Additionally, Dr. Chaves has written opinion pieces about the history of Christianity in Latin America for periodicals and magazines, including the Washington Post and The Christian Century. He serves on the editorial boards of Perspectives in Religious Studies, the HTI Book Series on Religion and Theology En Conjunto (Baylor University Press), and the Perspectives on Baptist Identities manuscript series (Mercer University Press), for which he serves as coeditor. He is also part of a research team working with award-winning filmmakers on a forthcoming documentary exploring the connections between Christian Nationalisms in Brazil and the United States.

Dr. Chaves came to Baylor after holding simultaneous positions as an Associate Director at the Hispanic Theological Initiative at Princeton Theological Seminary (HTI) and an Assistant Professor at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. In his role at HTI, Dr. Chaves helped write several grants, being part of the team who raised over $7.4 million in grants and gifts.

Kenneth Chestek

Kenneth D. Chestek joined the University of Wyoming College of Law faculty in the summer of 2012. He graduated cum laude from University of Pittsburgh School of Law where he was Editor in Chief of the Law Review. He practiced law for 21 years in Pennsylvania in a variety of settings, from solo practice to managing attorney for a branch office of a large law firm. While in practice, he also served for 18 years as Chief Civil Counsel to Erie County, Pennsylvania.

From 2010 to 2012 he served as President of the Legal Writing Institute (LWI), an organization of more than 2700 legal writing professionals in the United States and around the world. Previously, he served as a member of the Board of Directors and Treasurer of LWI. From 2005-2008 he co-chaired the ALWD/LWI Annual Survey Committee, and from 2004-2008 he served as a member of the Editorial Board of Legal Writing: The Journal of the Legal Writing Institute, a peer-reviewed academic journal.

He has published and given lectures on a wide variety of subjects, including metaphor, persuasion, teaching methods, tax exemption policy, hospitals and the uses of computers in law offices. His current scholarly interest is in the emerging discipline of Applied Legal Storytelling, which examines the role of narrative reasoning and storytelling in how judges decide cases.

Professor Chestek is one of three co-authors of a textbook for first-year courses in legal persuasion. All three authors are former Presidents of LWI. The second edition of the book, Your Client’s Story: Persuasive Legal Writing, was published by Aspen in 2018.

Elisha Chi

Ph.D. Candidate at Villanova University.

My research sits at the intersection of Indigenous Studies, Ethics, and Theology and Religious studies, with a focus on anticolonial critique and decolonial return of Indigenous land. I love teaching, and have enjoyed dipping my toes into the fascinating world of digital scholarship for the humanities. I’m also grateful for my experience as a community mediator - specifically the social-emotional skills inherent in that work - which has helped me to successfully navigate conflicts between students in my classroom, as well as parse underlying assumptions and concerns that arise as questions during research presentations - all of which provides a better learning environment for everyone in the room.

Assata de la Cruz

Assata de la Cruz is a Black & Indigenous Queer Southern mama of two. In addition to Soulforce, she is the owner of an apothecary and botanica rooted in Yoruba and Chahta ancestral wisdom. Through academia, she studied Journalism and Communications with a minor in Theology. Through her community, she is a forever student of rootwork, curanderismo and yoga. As an Aquarius, she thrives on creativity which she shares with the world through writing, photography and creating online content to amplify marginalized voices particularly against white Christian Supremacy.

Sean Cunningham

The National Archives UK, Advice and Records Knowledge, Head of Medieval Records

Sean has broad experience of 15th- and early 16th-century government history, records and research methodologies. He is especially interested in the interconnecting processes of government and how they functioned through representative agencies, officials and individuals in the period 1399–1558. His research has investigated aspects of political, military, legal, and financial history and records in that period. He is one of the leading historians on the reign of Henry VII (1485–1509), and has published and lectured widely on many aspects of this reign and the key figures who helped to establish Tudor power in England and Wales before the Reformation.

Sean is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a member of the council of the Selden Society. As joint organiser and convenor of the Late Medieval Seminar at the Institute of Historical Research, Sean has strong links to medieval research communities across UK, Europe, North America and Australasia.

Sean is currently exploring the nature of Tudor kingship and how it was projected, received, resisted and adapted between 1485 and 1530. Resulting from the Tudor Chamber Books project, Sean is currently co-authoring a major study, with Dr James Ross from Winchester University, for Oxford University Press.

Peter d’Errico

Professor d’Errico retired from the University in August, 2002. A central figure in the development of the Legal Studies Department here at UMass, his research and teaching were focused on the legal issues of Native Americans and indigenous peoples. He has also been active in litigation of indigenous peoples’ issues. He is the author of Federal Anti-Indian Law.

Professor d’Errico continues to engage in law-related writing and consulting, primarily on issues of concern to indigenous peoples. He is especially involved with Mashpee Wampanoag and Western Shoshone issues, as well as the work of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. He is an occasional columnist for Indian Country Today and book reviewer. He is also an elected member of the Leverett, MA, Select Board, the local governing body.   Peter also regularly posts academic information book reviews and much more at his Academia.edu page. 

For more information, check his website and NativeWeb (resources for indigenous peoples worldwide).

Podcast inteview with Peter d’Errico about his book.

Charlene Desir

Dr. Charlene Désir is a professor at Nova Southeastern University’s Abraham S. Fischler College of Education and School of Criminal Justice. She received her doctorate from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Dr. Désir’s academic interest is in the social, psychological, and spiritual adjustment of immigrants, specifically psycho-social trauma, and how psychosocial issues affect social, cognitive, identity, and spiritual development. Dr. Désir has presented various papers on the topic of immigrants and their adjustment to the US. She has also published on the topic of immigrant identity, spirituality, and becoming a reflective researcher. Dr. Désir founded the Empowerment Network (TEN), Global, a non-profit that supports the personal, spiritual, and academic development of women and students in Haiti and the US. She is a member of the Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc. and the vice president of Kosanba, an academic association on the study of PanAfrican Religions. She was the 2012 president of the Haitian Studies Association and a gubernatorial appointee to the Children’s Services Council in Broward County, FL. Dr. Désir has worked as a school psychologist, K-12 school counselor, school administrator, academic advisor, and professor.

DeDe Duncan-Probe

The Rt. Rev. Dr. DeDe Duncan-Probe was consecrated as the 11th Bishop of Central New York on December 3, 2016. Bishop DeDe’s vocation as a priest led her to serve in a wide variety of parish ministry settings, including two years in the Diocese of Massachusetts and nine years in the Diocese of Virginia, where she was the first woman leader.

She began her professional life as an educator, teaching in public and private schools, including 2 years working with inner-city at-risk youth in Los Angeles, California.

She holds an MA in psychology from Pepperdine University, a Master of Divinity degree from The General Theological Seminary, and a Ph.D. in theology from The Graduate Theological Foundation, completed at Oxford University. 

Jake Edwards

Jake Haiwhagai’i Edwards, Onondaga Eel Clan, lives on the Onondaga Nation Territory. He was appointed by the Grand Council of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy to the Haudenosaunee External Relations Committee to work on political and governmental structures beyond the borders of Haudenosaunee Country. This work includes diplomatic work at the United Nations and other entities outside the Confederacy. He sat on the Onondaga Council of Chiefs for over 25 years. He is a board member of the Seventh Generation Fund for Indigenous Peoples and a board member of the Indigenous Values Initiative. Jake was one of the primary voices leading the 400th anniversary (1613 – 2013) of the Two Row Wampum Campaign, in which people in canoes paddled the waterways from the Onondaga Nation Territory to the United Nations in NYC, teaching people at stops along the way.

Xavier Fitzsimmons Cruz

MFA Candidate, New York University BA, SUNY Albany, History and English

Wendy Felese

Assistant Professor, Native American Studies, Montana State University Billings

Cristofer Fernández, OFM Conv.

Cristofer holds a B.S. in Environmental & Conservation Biology from George Mason University and a M.A. in Theology, Religion, and Culture Studies from the Catholic University of America. He is in his final year of initial formation as a student-friar with the Conventual Franciscans (OFM Conv.), a religious order of the Catholic church. In his religious formation, Brother Cristofer is exploring the intersections between ethics, faith and science; religion, ecology and culture; the institutional church, social action and spirituality. He hopes to pursue a graduate degree in applied integrative ecology in the near future.

Over the years, Bro. Cristofer has developed enthusiasm and passion for understanding the interactions in nature, intersections between cultures, societies and the environment, and the role of humanity with respect to these relationships. He is interested in the conservation of ecosystems and preserving their services to local communities. Inspired by the line of instruction put forth in the Vatican teaching document, Laudato Si’, Bro. Cristofer is interested in advancing his knowledge of conservation ecology and issues in the human dimensions of environment, rooting this in Catholic Social Teaching’s framing of integral ecology. He is excited about advancing conversations and religious involvement in community-based conservation, developing cosmographies (applied cosmovisions/sense of place praxis) that learn from Indigenous peoples, environmental conflict mitigation, and addressing the nexus between poverty, environment, and religion. He hopes to accomplish this through immersive learning experiences, involvement in community-based projects, and by educating and empowering youth and communities from all walks of life to undergo an ‘ecological conversion’, to become involved in ecosocial works and to become ecologically literate citizens.

Joel Harrison

Joel Harrison is Associate Professor of Religion at Northern Virginia Community College in Manassas, VA. He holds a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Northwestern University. His work is focused on the relationship between theology and social theory at the turn of the 20th century in Germany and theory and method in the early history of religious studies. His dissertation, Between Normativity and History: Ernst Troeltsch’s Mystic Type and the Creative Possibility of Values, reads the “mystic type” in Troeltsch’s theological sociology of the Church as a way of understanding his later work in the philosophy of history, particularly his solution to the problem of history and normativity. The dissertation argues that the “mystic type” can be understood philosophically, rather than historically or sociologically, and that a philosophical account of Troeltsch’s mystic sheds new light on how he understands the development of Christian authority in history, showing how it is possible for norms to maintain authority while in a continual process of change.

His current project is an analysis of the underground Christian music scenes of the 90s and early 2000s through the lenses of social theory, political theology, and Troeltschean theology of culture. Tentatively titled Palms of Victory, Crowns of Glory: Evangelical Political Identity and Underground Christian Punk, the project traces the ways the underground Christian music scene, roughly 1994-2005, formed Christians politically and intellectually as American culture transitioned into a post-9/11 age. Of special interest is how leftist punk aesthetics were fully embraced in some circles and, thus, pushed evangelicalism in a progressive direction, and in others, “punk” was repurposed for more conservative political ends. The project connects the Christian punk/ska/emo/post-hardcore scenes all the way back to the Jesus Movement and the conservative political activism of suburban OC evangelicals in the 1960s, but also highlights the important ways it diverged from those movements and produced its own political consciousness.

Joel also holds a BA in English Education from California State University, Long Beach, an MA in English from the University of Northern Colorado, an MA in Theology from Fuller Theological Seminary, and an MA in Religious Studies from Northwestern. Areas of specialization: 19th and early 20th century German philosophy, social and critical theory, ecclesiology, theology of culture.

Joseph J. Heath

Onondaga Nation General Counsel

Joe Heath has a long background and extensive experience in civil rights litigation as one of the four lawyers representing a class action against New York State for the 1971 Attica prison assault and brutality, resulting in a $12 million settlement in 2000.  In his 45 years of practice, Joe has also worked in criminal defense; constitutional law and protection of free speech and assembly; protection of abused and neglected children; and fighting domestic AND POLICE violence; and he also an active member of Veterans for Peace.

He has served as General Counsel for the Onondaga Nation since 1982, and his work centers on environmental protection, particularly under the Clean Water Act, focusing on Onondaga Lake and Onondaga Creek.

Because the Nation is deeply concerned with climate change, the Nation asked Joe to research the issues of fracking and shared his knowledge of the many different environmental dangers created by fracking with community groups for six (6) years.

His work for the Nation also focuses on archeological site and unmarked burial site protection; NAGPRA repatriation and litigation; hunting and fishing rights; treaty rights; and excise tax issues.  Additionally, the work for the Nation has included assisting in protecting Nation children, and working with the Indian Child Welfare Act.  One such ICWA case went as far as the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.

He also took spend two weeks at Standing Rock in the fall of 2016, where he assisted in the legal tent, and later with the joint defense of 100s of criminal cases arising from the over-reaction of law enforcement to peaceful water protectors and in a joint effort to defeat a federal grand jury which was targeting water protectors.

His third law review article is an important work exposing the doctrine and is available at: Albany Government Law Review. Joe is also a decades long member of Veterans for Peace.

Luke Henkel

Luke Henkel is an activist, a seeker, a healer, and a writer, among many other things. A recent MS graduate in Climate Justice, his focus has been on Indigenous spirituality and the healing that comes with institutionally dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery. He currently works with Laudato Si Movement as national programs coordinator.

Jeannine Hill Fletcher

Prof. Jeannine Hill Fletcher grew up in a suburb of Chicago and attended the University of Illinois as an undergraduate, majoring in English. After a year with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, she attended Harvard Divinity School, earning her MTS in 1996 and ThD in 2001. She joined the Fordham faculty in 2001.

Prof. Hill Fletcher teaches at the intersection of Systematic Theology and issues of diversity (religious diversity, Christian cultural diversity, race and gender). Her research and teaching explore the role of theological thinking in shaping public discourse, including both activism and legislation. Prof. Hill Fletcher is a board member of the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition, a multi-generational, multi-religious and multi-racial grassroots organization working for social change.

She is the author of The Sin of White Supremacy: Christianity, Racism and Religious Diversity in America (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 2017). Honorable mention in category of ‘Faithful Citizenship’ Catholic Press Association Awards, 2018.

Leanne Goose

Leanne Goose, Dene and Inuvialuit (Inuit), was the Indian Residential Schools Portfolio, AFN Senior Advisor for the Indigenous delegations that traveled to the Vatican to address Pope Francis in 2021, and for the Papal Visit to deliver his Apology to Indigenous Peoples in Canada. Goose is currently the senior policy advisor for the Dene Nation/Assembly of First Nations Northwest Territories.

Louise Wakerakats:se Herne

Kanien’keha:ka (Mohawk), Bear Clan Mother

Tadodaho Sidney (Sid) Hill

Tadodaho Sidney (Sid) Hill, Onondaga Nation, Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Born to Eel Clanmother Phoebe Hill, Sid was raised in the traditional ways of the longhouse. After graduating Lafayette High School, Sid attended Syracuse University for two years. Sid then pursued a career in construction and was member of the Iron Workers union. Always an advocate for human rights and the environment, as a young man Sid traveled in 1973 with a delegation from the Onondaga Nation in support of the Oglala Lakota people on Pine Ridge in protest of corruption involving then Tribal President Richard Wilson and the failure of the United States Government to fulfill treaties. A lifelong lacrosse player, Sid is one of the founding members of the Iroquois National Team, Sid was chosen as the team captain for the Australia games in 1984. In 1996 Sid was chosen to “warm the seat” of the title of Tadodaho and was condoled in 2002. This title is unique as this lifetime position is the only title chosen by the other 49 chiefs of the Haudenosaunee confederacy. Today Sid focuses his attention on the many issues facing the nation and the environment. Sid is working daily on such issues as, International Indigenous issues, the Doctrine of Discovery, hydro fracking and commerce to name a few, together with all of the daily issues facing the Haudenosaunee. One of his most important responsibilities is ensuring we continue our traditional teachings. Sid takes part in the discussions at United Nations concerning the rights of Indigenous Peoples around the world. He has had the honor of opening the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues for over ten years. He takes this responsibility extremely serious and has a deep understanding of how all decisions and actions impact the Haudenosaunee.

Tiffany Hunsinger

University of Dayton

• Bachelor of Arts in History and Comparative Literature, Purdue University, May 2018
• Master of Arts in Theological Studies, University of Dayton, August 2020
• Doctorate in Theology, University of Dayton, in progress

Beverley Jacobs

Beverley Jacobs, CM, LLB, LLM, PhD is a member of the Bear Clan, Mohawk Nation of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. She is Associate Dean (Academic) at the Faculty of Law, University of Windsor and she practices law part-time at her home community of Six Nations of the Grand River Territory. Beverley has obtained a Bachelor of Law Degree from the University of Windsor in 1994, a Master of Law Degree from the University of Saskatchewan in 2000 and a PhD from the University of Calgary in 2018. Beverley is also a consultant/researcher/writer/public speaker. Her work centres around ending gendered colonial violence against Indigenous people and restoring Indigenous laws, beliefs, values, and traditions.

Freida J. Jacques

Freida J. Jacques, Whatwehni:neh is a citizen of the Onondaga Nation. She retired in 2016 from the Onondaga Nation School after serving for 21 years as a Home/School Liaison acting as a bridge between her culture and the many educational institutions in CNY. Peace and Healing are subjects she is passionate about.

Freida is a NY Humanities Scholar giving life lessons to organizations, libraries, historical centers throughout New York State all supported by NY Humanities.

In her retirement she has helped develop the script for the Skanonh Great Law of Peace Center in Liverpool, New York. The Center helps people understand their dependence on the natural world and that Peace was established here in Haudenosaunee Country, finalized on the shores of Onondaga Lake.

Freida has worked with Neighbors of Onondaga Nation (NOON) which is now called “Witness to Injustice”. She has facilitated groups from CNY, Rochester, and Buffalo as well as 11th grade students in the Syracuse City School District.

Paula Johnson

Paula C. Johnson is a professor of law at Syracuse University College of Law and newly appointed to the Franklin H. Williams Judicial Commission. This commission advises and educates decision makers in the New York Court System on issues surrounding litigants and employees of color, implementing recommendations in addressing these issues to ensure equitable justice in New York State. She earned her B.A. from the University of Maryland, College Park; J.D. from Temple University School of Law; and her LL.M. from Georgetown University Law Center. Professor Johnson and Professor Janis McDonald (emerita), co-founded and direct the Cold Case Justice Initiative (CCJI) at Syracuse University College of Law, which investigates racially-motivated murders committed during the civil rights era and in contemporary times. Professor Johnson has held several distinguished teaching posts, including the Haywood Burns Chair in Civil Rights at CUNY Law School (2005-2006), the Sparks Chair at the University of Alabama School of Law (2008), and the Syracuse University College of Law Bond, Schoeneck and King Distinguished Professorship (2004-2006). She also has taught at law schools at the University of Arizona, University of Baltimore, and Northern Illinois University.

Marina Johnson-Zafiris

Marina Johnson-Zafiris (Mohawk, Wolf Clan) is second year PhD Student at Cornell University in Information Science, with a minor in American Indian and Indigenous studies. Her research focuses on computational community science and technological interventions for industrial accountability and socio-environmental justice in Haudenosaunee Territory.

Hinemoa Jones

Hinemoa Jones descends from the wellspring of memories of all her mothers and fathers before her. She is of Māori (Te Arawa, Tainui) and Pākehā descent. She is a writer, an educator, and a facilitator of Māori language and of the traditions of the whare tapere — specifically, Māori games, raranga, and karetao Māori (the Māori puppet). Hinemoa has performed extensively in Aotearoa and internationally with karetao Māori and is excited about the revival of this taonga. Hinemoa lives and works in Coromandel and draws inspiration for her writing from all her whānau unfoldings.

Robert P. Jones

Robert P. Jones is the president and founder of Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI). He is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future (published September 5, 2023), as well as White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity, which won a 2021 American Book Award. He is also the author of The End of White Christian America, which won the 2019 Grawemeyer Award in Religion.

Jones writes regularly on politics, culture, and religion for The Atlantic, TIME, Religion News Service, and other outlets. He is frequently featured in major national media, such as CNN, MSNBC, NPR, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and others. Jones writes a weekly newsletter for those dedicated to the work of truth-telling, repair, and healing from the legacy of white supremacy in American Christianity at www.whitetoolong.net.

He holds a Ph.D. in religion from Emory University, an M.Div. from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and a B.S. in computing science and mathematics from Mississippi College. Jones was selected by Emory University’s Graduate Division of Religion as Distinguished Alumnus of the Year in 2013, and by Mississippi College’s Mathematics Department as Alumnus of the Year in 2016. Jones serves on the national program committee for the American Academy of Religion and is a past member of the editorial boards for the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, and Politics and Religion, a journal of the American Political Science Association.

Jones served as CEO of PRRI from the organization’s inception in 2009 to 2022.  Before founding PRRI, he worked as a consultant and senior research fellow at several think tanks in Washington, D.C., and was an assistant professor of religious studies at Missouri State University.

Lars Kirkhusmo Pharo

Professor of Religion and Ethics, Nord University

Sandra Klein

Université de Liège

Pāpā Mark Kopua

Diana Kopua

Randy Kritkausky

Randy Kritkausky is an enrolled tribal member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. He is a founder of ECOLOGIA, an international environmental organization that works on the planet’s more extreme challenges, and formerly professor at Keystone College, research scholar at Middlebury College, and Erasmus Mundus Scholar at the Central European University in Budapest and Lund University in Sweden. He lives in Vermont.

Shrutika Lakshmi

I’m a graduate student in the Syracuse University Department of Religion. I’m interested in the study of women in diaspora in South Asia.

Heather Law Pezzarossi

Heather Law Pezzarossi is an anthropologically trained archaeologist. She does collaborative work with Indigenous communities in North America, focusing on community-led heritage and archaeological projects that address the past, especially the colonial past, through methods and theories that serve Indigenous communities in the present and for the future. Faculty Profile.

Jordan Loewen-Colón

Dr. Jordan Loewen-Colón is the AI, Ethics, and Data Justice Fellow at Queen’s University’s School of Computing. His expertise is in philosophy and experiential design, where he researches and consults for new reality media projects (Video Games, Artificial Intelligence, and Virtual Reality), involving mysticism, altered states, and psychedelics. Website here.

Dana Lloyd

Dana Lloyd is Assistant Professor of Global Interdisciplinary Studies and Affiliated Faculty, Center for Peace and Justice Education at Villanova University. She is the author of Land Is Kin: Sovereignty, Religious Freedom, and Indigenous Sacred Sites (University Press of Kansas, 2023). She holds a PhD in Religion from Syracuse University, and a law degree and an LLM from Tel Aviv University’s Faculty of Law. Faculty Bio

Kenneth H. Lokensgard

Dr. Kenneth H. Lokensgard is the Assistant Director for the Center for Native American Research & Collaboration, in the Office of Native American Programs, at Washington State University. Ken’s research has focused upon the sometimes conflicting ontologies and epistemologies of Indigenous and Non-Indigenous peoples. Specifically, he has worked with Niitsitapi (Blackfoot) elders and ceremonialists, in the US and Canada, to highlight the personhood of Blackfoot ceremonial items and the need for their repatriation. He is also interested in traditional protocols of reciprocity practiced by Native Americans and how they inform Indigenous research methodologies. Dr. Lokensgard is committed to promoting the importance of these protocols and methodologies, as means of facilitating collaborative work between Native and Non-Native communities. To this end, he is active in developing Institutional Review Board processes and guidelines that ensure collaboration and recognition of Tribal sovereignty. He is also committed to promoting Native scholarship and scholars within the academy and elsewhere.

Jason Long

Youngstown State University, History and Political Science

Valentin Lopez

Valentin Lopez has been the Chairman of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band since 2003, one of three historic tribes that are recognized as Ohlone. Valentin is Mutsun, Chumash and Yokuts. The Amah Mutsun are comprised of the documented descendants of Missions San Juan Bautista and Santa Cruz. Valentin Lopez is a Native American Advisor to the University o f California, Office of the President on issues related to repatriation. He is also a Native American Advisor to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) and the Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology. Valentin is actively involved in efforts to restore tribal indigenous knowledge and ensure our history is accurately told. Finally, Valentin is working to restore the Mutsun Language and is a traditional Mutsun singer and dancer. As Chairman, Valentin is a standing member on all Tribal committees and Boards.

Douglas Lucia

Bishop Douglas Lucia was born in Plattsburg, NY, and ordained in the Diocese of Ogdensburg on May 20, 1989. He holds a Master of Divinity degree from Christ the King Seminary. Lucia studied canon law in Rome from 1997 to 1999 at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas.^[1]^ Lucia served in the diocese as secretary to the bishop, vice chancellor (and later chancellor) and director of vocations. He loves hockey, and was involved in coaching youth hockey teams up until his appointment as Bishop of Syracuse.

Gaeñ hia uh/Betty Lyons

Gaen hia uh (Small Sky), (Colonized Name: Betty Lyons), (Snipe Clan, Onondaga Nation), President & Executive Director of the  American Indian Law Alliance (AILA). She is an Indigenous and environmental activist and citizen of the Onondaga Nation. Growing up Ms. Lyons learned a deep respect for the earth and the responsibility to protect it. Ms. Lyons worked together with the NOON organization (Neighbors of the Onondaga Nation) to educate and teach local communities about the culture of the Onondaga Nation to further a better understanding and to bridge the gap between the communities. Ms. Lyons has participated and organized rallies and demonstrations pushing for a ban on fracking in New York State, until a ban was achieved in December 2014. Betty Lyons has worked for the Onondaga Nation for over nineteen years as a Public Relations Representative, Manager of the Onondaga Nation Arena, and as Executive Assistant to Tadodaho Sidney Hill. She has been an active participant at the annual United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) since the first session in 2001 and has coordinated the opening ceremonies. For over 10 years, Ms. Lyons was the President of Onondaga Minor Athletic Club where she organized and managed over 15 youth sports team programs. Betty Lyons graduated from Cazenovia College ALA (2013), Bryant Stratton College Graduate of Paralegal Program. Betty is sits on the Haudenosaunee External Relations Committee. She is also the hardworking mother of Garrett and Sid Jr.

Oren Lyons

Oren Lyons, serves as the Onondaga Nation Turtle Clan Faith Keeper and as a member Chief of the Onondaga Council of Chiefs and the Grand Council of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy.

Oren holds the title of Professor Emeritus at SUNY Buffalo, has an honorary Doctor of Law Degree from his Alma Mater, Syracuse University where Lyons Hall is named in his honor. Chief Lyons is an All-American Lacrosse Hall of Famer and Honorary Chairman of the Iroquois Nationals Lacrosse Team. He is an accomplished artist, environmentalist, and author.

Oren is a leading voice at the UN Permanent Forum on Human Rights for Indigenous Peoples, serves on the Executive Committee of Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders for Human Survival, serves on the Board for Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, as Principal of One Bowl Productions, and honorary board member for 4 The Future Foundation.

Recipient of several prestigious awards including; The United Nations NGO World Peace Prize, the Ellis Island Congressional Medal of Honor, The Rosa Parks and George Arent Award for environmental and social activism and recently receiving Sweden’s prestigious Friends of the Children Award with his colleague the late Nelson Mandela. Recipient of Green Cross International Environmental Icon Award 2019.

Oren Lyons ‘58, H’93 Headlines August Conversations About the Doctrine of Discovery.

Pat McCabe (Diné)

Pat McCabe (Weyakpa Najin Win, Woman Stands Shining) is a Diné (Navajo) mother, grandmother, activist, artist, writer, ceremonial leader, and international speaker. She is a voice for global peace, and her paintings are created as tools for individual, earth and global healing. She draws upon the Indigenous sciences of Thriving Life to reframe questions about sustainability and balance, and she is devoted to supporting the next generations, Women’s Nation and Men’s Nation, in being functional members of the “Hoop of Life” and upholding the honor of being human.

Her primary work at the moment is:

• The reconciliation between the masculine and feminine, Men’s Nation and Women’s Nation
• Remembering, recreating or creating anew a narrative for the Sacred Masculine
• Addressing the Archetypal Wounding that occurred in our misunderstanding and abuse of technology in prayer, ceremony and science

Zachary Melton

University of Iceland

S. Lily Mendoza

S. Lily Mendoza is a Kapampangan-born Filipina and currently resides in Waawiyatanong (aka Detroit, Michigan). She is Full Professor of Culture and Communication at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan and is known for her pathbreaking work on the politics of indigeneity particularly within the Philippine diasporic and homeland context. She is the author of books and essays exploring questions of identity and subjectivity, cultural politics in national, post- and trans- national contexts, discourses on indigenization, ecology, and the cultural logic of modernity and civilization. Among her book publications are Between the Homeland and the Diaspora: The Politics of Theorizing Filipino and Filipino American Identities, Back from the Crocodile’s Belly: Philippine Babaylan Studies and the Struggle for Indigenous Memory, and, most recently, Decolonizing Ecotheology: Indigenous and Subaltern Challenges. Currently, she serves as the Executive Director of the Center for Babaylan Studies (CfBS), a movement for decolonization and indigenization among diasporic Filipinos.

Robert J. Miller

Robert J. Miller’s areas of expertise are Federal Indian Law, American Indians and international law, American Indian economic development, Native American natural resources, and Civil Procedure. He is an enrolled citizen of the Eastern Shawnee Tribe, the Interim Chief Justice for the Pascua Yaqui Tribe Court of Appeals and sits as a judge for other tribes. He is the Willard H. Pedrick Distinguished Research Scholar at ASU and the Faculty Director of the Rosette LLP American Indian Economic Development Program at ASU. 

In 2014 he was elected to the American Philosophical Society. The APS is the oldest learned society in the United States and was created by Benjamin Franklin in 1743. Thomas Jefferson served as president of the APS for seventeen years overlapping his time as president of the United States. The APS has only elected about 5,600 members in its 280 year history.

Before joining ASU in 2013, Professor Miller was on the faculty of Lewis & Clark Law School from 1999-2013. Prior to his career in academia, he practiced Indian law with Hobbs, Straus, Dean & Walker, and practiced litigation with the Stoel Rives law firm. Following graduation from law school, he clerked for Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Professor Miller’s scholarly works include articles, books, and book chapters on a wide array of Federal Indian Law issues and Civil Procedure, and he speaks regularly on Indian Law issues across the U.S. and in other countries. He is the author of “Native America, Discovered and Conquered: Thomas Jefferson, Lewis and Clark, and Manifest Destiny” (Praeger 2006), and “Reservation Capitalism: Economic Development in Indian Country” (Praeger 2012). He co-authored “A Promise Kept: The Muscogee (Creek) Nation and McGirt v. Oklahoma (forthcoming University of Oklahoma Press 2022); ”Creating Private Sector Economies in Native America: Sustainable Development through Entrepreneurship (Cambridge University Press 2019); and “Discovering Indigenous Lands: The Doctrine of Discovery in the English Colonies” (Oxford University Press 2010). Professor Miller has worked as a consultant with the American Philosophical Society since 2006 on tribal language and archival issues. He was elected to the American Law Institute in 2012.

Rev. Lee M. Miller II

Rev. Lee M. Miller II, is the Lutheran Bishop, Upstate New York Synod and was elected on June 5, 2021 by the Synod Assembly of the Upstate New York Synod to serve as the fifth bishop in the synod’s history. 

Bishop Miller served as the Senior Pastor of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, Buffalo, NY, and the lead pastor of St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church in Philadelphia, PA. He holds a Master of Divinity degree from the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, and his Bachelor of Arts degree in English was earned from the State University of New York in Albany.

Sebastian Modrow

Dr. Sebastian Modrow is an Assistant Professor at Syracuse University’s School of Information Studies. He received a doctorate in Ancient History from the University of Rostock, Germany, an Exam of the State degree (Masters equivalent) in History and Latin from the University of Greifswald, Germany, and a MLIS and a CAS in Cultural Heritage Preservation from Syracuse University.

Previous work experiences include Lecturer for Latin at the University of Greifswald, Oldfather Research Fellow at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Teacher for Latin and history, Coordinator of Syracuse University Libraries’ Marcel Breuer Digital Archives project, Assistant Archivist as well Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts at Syracuse University Libraries’ Special Collections Research Center.

Sharon Moran

Associate Professor, Environmental Studies, SUNY–ESF

Sharon Moran is a geographer from the Department of Environmental Studies at SUNY- Environmental Science and Forestry. Her research explores the connections among people, water, and land in several places across Turtle Island. She’s especially interested how technologies are involved in mediating people’s relationships with water. Classes she offers to SU and ESF students include ‘Sustainable Enterprise’ and ‘Diversity and Knowledge of the Environment.’ Her recent work has explored ways to advance environmental justice, stream restoration, community science, and composting toilets, among other things. Together with Professors Richard Smardon and April Baptiste, she’s a co-author of Revitalizing Urban Waterways: Streams of Environmental Justice.

Tove Synnøve Mentsen Ness

Avdelingsleder, Faculty of Education and Arts, Nord University

Tina Nagata

Tina Ngata (Ngāti Porou) is a mother of two from the East Coast of Te Ika a Maui, Aotearoa New Zealand. She is the author of Kia Mau: Resisting Colonial Fictions, which analyses the application of the Doctrine of Discovery by James Cook, and critiques the New Zealand government Cook anniversary celebrations. Her work involves advocacy for environmental, Indigenous and human rights. This includes local, national and international initiatives that highlight the role of settler colonialism in issues such as climate change and waste pollution, and promote Indigenous conservation as best practice for a globally sustainable future.

Danielle Nagle

She is the the Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation Executive Director. Danielle is inspired by Gage’s philosophies on the relationships between women, science, and the earth. Danielle looks forward to pushing the possibilities for public education and social change in the context of historic house museums.

Danielle earned a Ph.D. in Environmental Science from the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in 2021 and is the author of multiple peer-reviewed journal articles.

Jonathan Nahar

Jonathan is a Palestinian-American Christian and graduate of the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. He has worked in multiple countries doing Palestine advocacy, human rights monitoring, grassroots organizing, and challenging anti-Arab racism. Jonathan’s work connects the Palestinian decolonial struggle with those of other indigenous peoples, and challenges theologies of domination.

Sarah Nahar

Sarah Nahar, M.Div (from Elkhart, Indiana Potawatomi traditional land) is a fourth year PhD student in the Religion department at Syracuse University. Her research focus is on the toilet, both the ritual and receptacle. She is matriculating concurrently at neighboring SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in the Department of Environmental Studies.

Sarah is also a nonviolent action trainer and interspiritual theologian. Previously, Sarah was a 2019 Rotary Peace Fellow and worked at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center in Atlanta, Georgia. She was a founding member of the ecojustice Carnival de Resistance and has been the Executive Director of Community Peacemaker Teams. She attended Spelman College, majoring in Comparative Women’s Studies and International Studies, minoring in Spanish. She has an MDiv from Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary in her hometown. Her hobbies include capoeira, community organizing, and home improvement projects.

Brice Nordquist

Brice Nordquist is a community-engaged writing and literacy researcher and teacher. He works through ethnographic and participatory research and public arts and humanities projects to study and support students’ movements across contexts of learning and stages of education. He co-founded and co-directs the Narratio Fellowship, a storytelling and educational pipeline program for resettled refugee youth, and the founder and director of the College of Arts & Sciences’s Engaged Humanities Network , which seeds, supports, and fosters exchanges across publicly-engaged research, teaching, and creative projects in pursuit of more inclusive, interconnected, and just communities and institutions.

Hi book, Literacy & Mobility (Routledge), received the 2019 Conference on College Composition and Communication Advancement of Knowledge Award, presented annually for the empirical research publication in the previous two years that most advances writing studies. The book follows first-generation college students from different tracks of English in a public high school through their first years at research universities, community colleges, and full-time jobs to show how they draw upon multiple literacies and linguistic resources to both accommodate and transform conventions of reading and writing. Faculty Profile

Steven T. Newcomb

Steven Newcomb (Shawnee/Lenape) co-founded the Indigenous Law Institute in 1992 with Birgil Kill Straight (1940-2019), who was a traditional headman and ceremonial leader of the Oglala Lakota Nation. Newcomb is recognized as one of the world’s foremost authorities on the Doctrine of Discovery as made evident by his law review articles and his book Pagans in the Promised Land: Decoding the Doctrine of Christian Discovery (Fulcrum, 2008). He is the co-producer of the documentary movie The Doctrine of Discovery: Unmasking the Domination Code, directed by Sheldon Wolfchild (Dakota), which is based on Pagans in the Promised Land. His website is originalfreenations.com and he can be contacted at stv4newcomb[at]yahoo[period]com. The documentary can be ordered at 38Plus2Productions.com.

Jim O’Connor

Jim O’Connor is the producer of Access Audio, a storytelling initiative of the Special Collections Research Center at Syracuse University Libraries, which launched a 12-part podcast series titled, “The Land You’re On: Acknowledging the Haudenosaunee.” The podcast series features candid conversations with SU Haudenosaunee students, alumni, staff and community members. Its aim is to help listeners learn about the history and the people who were the first residents of the area.

Rev Alba Onofrio

Rev Alba Onofrio (aka Reverend Sex) is a Southern Appalachian First-Gen Latinx Queer Evangelical Femme Resister who lives and loves in la Lucha with QTPOC folks as a Spiritual Healer and Bruja Troublemaker to subvert systems of domination, combat spiritual terrorism, reclaim the Divine and the erotic, and eradicate shame and fear wherever they are found. They hold a Masters of Divinity degree from Vanderbilt Divinity School, where their studies focused on the theologies of sex, embodiment of the Divine in the queer colonized body, and sexual ethics based in queer desire. Alba has also worked in the immigrants rights movement for over a decade, previously serving as the Executive Director of El Centro Hispano, the then-largest non-religiously affiliated grassroots community center in North Carolina. As the former spiritual strategist for Soulforce and co-founder of the Sexual Liberation Collective, Reverend Sex continues to work for Queer Liberation all over the place, but most fondly in the US South and in solidarity with the Global South.

Naimi Pankaj Patel

Began Ph.D. program at Syracuse University in religion 2022; MTS in South Asian Religions, Harvard Divinity School 2021; BA in Religion, Philosophy, and Journalism and Media Studies, Rutgers University 2018; Research Interests: Hindu Religious Traditions; love, affect, and performance; digital religiosity; comparative religion, global religious movements, South Asian diaspora; identity, community, and belonging.

Cara Peacock

Univeristy of Toronto Ph.D. student in Political Science Nehiyaw and Anishinaabe. Political philosophy and decolonial feminisms.

James (Jim) Perkinson

Ecumenical Theological Seminary, Theology and Ethics, Faculty Member.

Jim Perkinson is a long-time activist and educator from inner city Detroit, where he has a history of involvement in various community development initiatives and low-income housing projects. He holds a PhD in theology/history of religions from the University of Chicago, is the author of White Theology: Outing Supremacy in Modernity and Shamanism, Racism, and Hip-Hop Culture: Essays on White Supremacy and Black Subversion, and has written extensively in both academic and popular journals on questions of race, class and colonialism in connection with religion and urban culture. He is in demand as a speaker on a wide variety of topics related to his interests and a recognized artist on the spoken-word poetry scene in the inner city.

Jim is interested in using a broad array of interdisciplinary tools to investigate the way socio-economic position, racial presupposition, and gender perspective already inform our values and orientation to life long before we begin to grapple with questions of identity, ministry or spirituality. He is particularly concerned to understand the way white supremacy, as an effect of colonial Christian practices, continues to be reproduced in mainstream Western cultures. In addition, he explores how the creative forms of cultural resistance developed by marginalized groups can critically challenge Christianity today. These concerns figure in both his academic writing and the performance poetry that he produce as a necessary adjunct to teaching. Becoming at least bi-cultural in communication skills and poly-rhythmic in spiritual practice is fast emerging as a requisite capacity for Christian leadership in a transnational world. And the need for a pedagogy adequate to such a demand is his consuming passion.

Katie Peters

​I am an ABD doctoral student in Philosophy at the University of Connecticut, under the supervision of Heather Battaly and Tracy Llanera.

My dissertation explores the intersection of extremism and gender—specifically, the role and presence of women in the American far-right. Women’s roles in the far-right have often been dismissed, ignored, or counted as ‘feminist’ wins despite the regressive content of their beliefs. My dissertation focuses on the ways in which we exculpate these women in discussions of moral responsibility, and proposes an alternative understanding of both backward- and forward-looking moral responsibility based in intersectional feminist theory.

Aside from my dissertation, I work on projects in the field of virtue and vice epistemology.

Quinn Pierson

Syracuse University

CK Raju

(Honorary Professor) Indian Institute of Education, G. D. Parikh Centre, J. P. Naik Bhavan, University of Mumbai, Kalina Campus,  Santacruz (E), Mumbai 400 098

Mitch Randall

Mitch is the executive officer of Good Faith Media. Before joining GFM, he was the executive director of the Baptist Center for Ethics. In addition, he pastored churches in Kansas, Texas and Oklahoma for over 20 years, and he holds a Master’s of Divinity with Biblical Languages from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and a Doctor of Ministry degree from George W. Truett Theological Seminary. Mitch is a citizen of the Muscogee Creek Nation with his ancestors reaching back to the McIntosh and Childers clans. He is married to Missy Randall and they reside in Norman, Oklahoma. They have two adult sons.

Nicholas Robinson

Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University

Professor Nicholas A. Robinson has developed environmental law since 1969, when he was named to the Legal Advisory Committee of the President’s Council on Environmental Quality. He has practiced environmental law in law firms for municipalities and as general counsel of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. He drafted New York’s wetlands and wild bird laws and was inaugurated as the first chairman of both the statutory Freshwater Wetlands Appeals Board and Greenway Heritage Conservancy for the Hudson River Valley.

Professor Robinson has served as legal advisor and chairman of the Commission on Environmental Law of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, engaged in drafting treaties and counseling different countries on the preparation of their environmental laws. He founded Pace’s environmental law programs, edited the proceedings of the 1992 United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and is author of several books and numerous articles. He teaches a number of environmental law courses. He is a member of the editorial boards of the Asia Pacific Journal of Environmental Law (University of Sydney, since 1998), the Macquarie Journal of International and Comparative Environmental Law (since 2004), and the journal of the Global Pandemic Network (since 2021). He is also an advisor of the Pace Environmental Law Review (since 1978), in addition to being on the Editorial Advisory Board, and Consulting Editor, Environmental Law, Oceana Publications (1996-2004).

Professor Robinson served as James D. Hopkins Professor of Law during the 1991–1993 academic years. He established the Doctor of Juridical Sciences (SJD) program at Haub Law, along with the Masters of Laws degree (LLM) in Environmental Law, Feldschuh LL.M. Fellowship, and the JD Certificate in Environmental Law. On March 2009, the Pace University Board of Trustees conferred the position of University Professor for the Environment on Nicholas A. Robinson for his significant contribution to scholarship in the field of environmental law, both in the USA and abroad.

Eve Reyes-Aguirre

Eve Reyes-Aguirre, an Izkaloteka Azteca Indigenous woman, has been a community organizer at Tonatierra, An Embassy for Indigenous Peoples, for more than 22 years. In that time, Eve has been at the forefront in advocating for human rights, women’s rights, Indigenous Peoples rights and environmental rights on the local, national, and international level. Eve has worked tirelessly to bring awareness to the political, social, economic and environmental challenges affecting Indigenous Peoples globally. She also organizes at the grassroots level regionally and locally to strengthen traditional identity, equality and well-being of Indigenous Women, Indigenous Peoples, and the protection of water and the environment.  Eve has represented her community annually at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. Eve has also served the Global Indigenous Women’s Caucus as Co-chair and/or Rapporteur since 2009. In April of 2013, Eve was a co-organizer of the 1st International Conference on Dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery held in Phoenix Arizona, with over 430 indigenous participants from all over the globe.

Sally Roesch Wagner

DR. SALLY ROESCH WAGNER. Awarded one of the first doctorates in the country for work in women’s studies (UC Santa Cruz) and a founder of one the first college-level women’s studies programs in the United States (CSU Sacramento), Dr. Wagner has taught women’s studies courses for 51 years. The Founder/Director of the Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation, she teaches in Syracuse University’s Honors Program and California State University, Sacramento’s Women and Gender Studies department.

A major historian of the suffrage movement, Dr. Wagner is active on the national scene. She appeared on the CNN Special Report: Women Represented and CNN’s Quest’s World of Wonder. She has been quoted in the New York Times, Washington Post, Smithsonian, Nation and Time Magazine, among others. Her recent articles appeared in the New York Daily News, Ms. Magazine, the National Women’s History Alliance newsletter and National Suffrage Centennial Commission blog. In March 2021, the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian featured the film, Without a Whisper which traces Dr. Wagner’s research demonstrating the Haudenosaunee influence on the suffrage movement through her friendship with Wakerakats:te, the Mohawk Bear Clan Mother. She appeared in and wrote the faculty guide for the Ken Burns’ documentary, “Not for Ourselves Alone.”

A prolific author, Dr. Wagner’s anthology The Women’s Suffrage Movement, with a Forward by Gloria Steinem (Penguin Classics, 2019), unfolds a new intersectional look at the 19th century woman’s rights movement.  Sisters in Spirit: Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Influence on Early American Feminists (Native Voices, 2001) documents the surprisingly unrecognized authority of Native women, who inspired the suffrage movement. It was followed by her young reader’s book, We Want Equal Rights: How Suffragists Were Influenced by Native American Women (Native Voices, 2020).

Among her awards, Dr. Wagner was selected as a 2020 New York State Senate Woman of Distinction, one of “21 Leaders for the 21st Century” by Women’s E-News in 2015 and she received the Katherine Coffey Award for outstanding service to museology from the Mid-Atlantic Association of Museums in 2012.

Rochele Royster

Rochele Royster, Ph.D, ATR-BC is an assistant professor of art therapy in the Department of Creative Arts Therapy. Royster has worked for the last 20 years integrating art therapy into the educational setting and has worked with youth, adolescents, and young adults with various learning differences such as autism, traumatic brain disorders, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Using a trans-disciplinary approach, she is interested in community and school-based art therapy; race, power and policy in education; multi-sensory methods in reading and literacy; trauma-informed classrooms; environmental justice; black disability; and special education as it relates to decolonization of pedagogy and practice in institutional and public settings.

Royster’s dissertation developed as a grassroots approach to arts-based social change and addresses gun violence, death, and grief through memorials of resistance. She assisted in creating transformative art-based social justice curriculum for Cities of Peace/Jane Addams Hull House, the Teacher Institute/ Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Office of Arts and Education at CPS and has conducted workshop series for Chicago Park District teaching artists. She has also worked with sexual, domestic violence, and human trafficking survivors and Cambodian youth refugees.

In 2017, Royster completed a Ph.D. in community psychology at National Louis University in Chicago and also holds master’s degrees in special education (2000) from Virginia State University and art therapy (2002) from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago as well as a B.F.A. in studio arts (1998) from Virginia State University. Royster serves on the steering committee of Psychologists for Social Responsibility and is a board director for the American Art Therapy Association.

Dillon Sampson

Syracuse University

George Emilio Sanchez

George Emilio Sanchez is a writer, performance artist and social justice activist. He was born in Los Angeles, raised in Orange County, California, and became a New York transplant in 1978. He began making original pieces in 1992 and has continued making performance work and social justice projects to this day. He is currently in the process of crafting a new performance series titled “Performing the Constitution.” The first installment of the series, titled XIV, will premiere at Dixon Place in June 2019. This work melds autobiography and history in a performance that gives narrative to the injustices racialized communities face as they fight for “equal protection of the laws.” The second performance in the series is titled In the Court of the Conqueror and confronts the over 200 year-old history of U.S. Supreme Court rulings that have diluted the Tribal Sovereignty of Native Nations. This second installment will premiere at Abrons Arts Center in fall of 2020, where George is the 2019–20 PATHS Social Practice Artist in Residence. As the Abrons Social Practice AIR he works with youth groups on the Lower East Side to use the arts as a restorative tool while addressing the reality and trauma of gun violence. For the past two years, he organized and facilitated BANG BANG GUN AMOK, a 24-hour performance filibuster on gun culture.

George has been the Performance Director of Emergenyc under the umbrella of the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics since 2008. This three-month program works with cohorts of 16-20 national and international participants to explore the intersection of arts and activism. He also teaches performance and arts education at the College of Staten Island/City University of New York. He is a Professor in the Performing and Creative Arts Department where he served as the chairperson for 12 years.

George’s work has been presented by theaters and museums in over 25 states and has received support from National Performance Network, the Fulbright Program (Peru), New York Foundation for the Arts, the Jerome Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation. George has been an artist-in-residence at Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Abrons Arts Center, Dixon Place, Dance Theater Workshop, Pergones Theater, The MacDowell Colony, Tigertail Productions (Miami), Dance Umbrella (Austin), Centro Cultural de la Raza (San Diego), and Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center (San Antonio).

George resides in Fort Greene, Brooklyn and has three daughters.

Michelle Schenandoah

Kaluhyanu:wes “She is Fond of the Sky”

Michelle D. Schenandoah is a traditional member of the Onʌyota’:aka Oneida Nation of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. She was raised on Oneida territories within the traditional teachings of the Haudenosaunee Longhouse and a family of traditional leaders. Michelle is a mother of four and a new grandmother; she lives in her people’s homelands in Syracuse, NY with her family.

Sarah Shute

Indigenous Values Initiative

Rikki Solomon

Pranay Somayajula

Hindus for Human Rights

Christopher Sudol

Christopher is a 2023 J.D. Candidate and Haub Scholar in the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University

Andrea Smith

A. Lynn Smith is a historical anthropologist whose research explores settler colonialism, collective and public memory, and place-loss. Memory Wars: Settlers and Natives Remember Washington’s Sullivan Expedition of 1779 (2023) critically examines the public memory of the Sullivan Expedition against the Haudenosaunee, and contrasts settler accounts with the depiction found at Haudenosaunee cultural centers. Previous books include Colonial Memory and Postcolonial Europe: Maltese Settlers in Algeria and France (2006), on settler memory of Algeria; Europe’s Invisible Migrants (2005); and Rebuilding Shattered Worlds: Creating Community by Voicing the Past (2016). She is currently working on a book on the public memory of the Walking Purchase “treaty” in eastern Pennsylvania.

Scott Manning Stevens

Scott Manning Stevens is a citizen of the Akwesasne Mohawk Nation and earned his PhD in English from Harvard University. Dr. Stevens was the former Director of the D’Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies at the Newberry Library in Chicago. He is currently the Director of the Native American Indigenous Studies Program at Syracuse University. There he also teaches courses in the departments of English and Art History. During the academic year 2021-2022, he was a fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Stevens is the co-author of two books on Native American history and visual culture, Home Front: Daily Life in the Civil War North (U Chicago 2013) and Art of the American West (Yale UP, 2014).  Dr. Stevens is also a co-editor and contributor to the 2015 collection of essays Why You Can’t Teach United States History without American Indians. His recent book chapters and articles include: “From ‘Iroquois Cruelty’ to the Mohawk Warrior Society: Stereotyping and the Strategic Uses of a Reputation for Violence,” Violence and Indigenous Communities: Confronting the Past, Engaging the Present, (Northwestern UP, 2021) and”On Native American Erasure in the Classroom,” Teaching Race in Perilous Times, (SUNY Press, 2021). Stevens also serves or has served on advisory committees at the National Museum of the American Indian, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the New York Historical Society. In the past he has held fellowships from the Mellon Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the National Endowment of the Humanities.

Franklyn Telles

Northern Arizona University, Ph.D. Candidate in Earth Sciences and Environmental Sustainability.

Experienced instructor with a demonstrated history of working in the higher education industry. Skilled in Arcgis Products, Lecturing, Instructional Design, Environmental Awareness, Culturally-Relevant Sustaining Education, and languages: Russian and Spanish. A strong education professional graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, California State University, Northridge, and the Richard Gilder Graduate School (American Museum of Natural History).

Eglute Trinkauskaite

Eglute Trinkauskaite is a full time faculty in Humanistic Studies department at Maryland Institute College of Art.  

She holds her PhD, MPhil, and MA in Religion from Syracuse University and her BA in Religion from Hunter College, City University of New York. Her teaching and research interests focus on indigenous and ethnic traditions, the natural environment, and globalization. Her latest writing explores complex layers of culture and religion in post-Soviet Lithuania. Her current book project, The Swarming Dead, focuses on the continued vitality of indigenous religion and its imprint on modern Lithuania and its diaspora. Eglute has taught at Syracuse University, Hamilton College, and Nazareth College of Rochester, New York. She is an active member of American Academy of Religion and Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies.

Terry Reeder

Terry Hawley Reeder, PhD, Visiting Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, College of Wooster

Indigenous values inform all of my work. My teaching and research have three strands: one is investigating howpatriarchal Christianities misuse natural law in the American public sphere to provoke animus against queer people and women. Second, I identify how religions, primarily Christianities and Indigenous sacred practices, promote liberation or oppression, including teaching about the Doctrine of Discovery. Last, I work with Harriet Jacob’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl as a text for the study of religions.

Brianna Rose Svitak

Syracuse University

Rick Ufford-Chase

Center for Jubilee Practice

Karina Vargas

Karina Vargas Espinoza is Costa Rican, and an educator, feminist theologian, linguist, and psychologist. She holds a Master’s Degree in Global Leadership from Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, California, and a Master’s Degree in Studies of Social and Family Violence from Universidad Estatal a Distancia located in San José, Costa Rica. She currently serves as Director for the Institute on Spiritual Violence, Healing and Social Change, a project of Soulforce. She is also a professor of Liberation Theologies at the Center for World Education and Experience at the University of Augsburg in Minnesota. Among her main research focuses are the power dynamics involved in spiritual-religious violence and therapeutic processes to support survivors of these forms of violence.

James Webster

Bronwyn Williams

Sara Jolena Wolcott

Sequoia Samanvaya Descendent of some of Founding Fathers of the United States of America, Sara Jolena Wolcott, M.Div, is now building people’s capacity to collectively reMember our ecological familial, national and global origin stories to enable more harmonious futures. An ecotheologian and unconventional minister, she is the founder of Sequoia Samanvaya, a healer, a ceremonialist, and a Legacy Advisor with Innovation 4.4. She is primarily interested in the work of ReMembering and ReEnchanting our world. She is known for her laughter and the (sometimes wild) power of her presence.

Born and raised on the historical Ohlone lands in the California Bay Area into a Quaker family, her quest to understand how we might navigate through the current social and ecological crises took her on a global odyssey. Her wide and wild range of experience, all of which brings depth to her ministry, includes : co-leading the 33-country multi-disciplinary ReImagining Development Program at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), consulting for the World Bank, living as a traveling singer in India, serving as a community minister at Judson Memorial Church in New York City, working as a prison chaplain on Rikers Island Correctional Facility in NYC and working as a Fellow in Spirituality and Climate Change at the Institute of the Advancement of Science and Society in Germany. She also has nearly 20 years of experience as a healer and ceremonialist.

Her formal education includes a CMT from the McKinnon Institute of Massage Therapy in Oakland, CA; a BA from Haverford College in Anthropology, an MA in international development from the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, UK; and a Masters of Divinity (M.Div.) at Union Theological Seminary. Her international speaking engagements have brought her to 10 countries and she has spoken in over 16 U.S. states. She currently lives on the historical homeland of the Mohigan/Mahican people in the Hudson Valley. She enjoys painting dragons, sitting around fires, and moonlit walks.

Joss Willsbrough

Syracuse University

Victor Valle

California Polytechnic State University

Victor Valle’s translations of Latin American poetry and prose earned him an NEA fellowship in 1980 and the cronista gaze he brought to the Los Angeles Times, where he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1984 for his contributions to a multi-part series on Southern California’s Latino community. He next wrote Recipe of Memory: Five Generations of Mexican Cuisine (1995), a crónica of the female elders who curated a Mexican family’s recipes since the mid-19th century. The book garnered literary nominations from the Julia Child Cookbook Award and the James Beard Foundation Awards, an Italian-language edition, and a chapter in* American Food Writing: A Literary Anthology. In one chapter of *Latino Metropolis (2000) Valle explored gastronomy’s role in city-building and urban placemaking, while his next books (City of Industry: Genealogies of Southern California Power in 2009, and LatinX Writing Los Angeles: Nonfiction Dispatches From A Decolonial Rebellion in 2018) delved deeper into the contested genealogies of L.A.’s urban places. His next book, The Poetics of Fire: Metaphors of Chile Eating in the Borderlands (University of New Mexico Press, 2023) attempts a non-essentialist eco-aesthetic of culinary art based in Native relational cosmologies, an effort whose indigenizing implications extend to ChicanX, LatinX, and Non-Native performing and literary arts, including poetry, and the culinary arts generally.

Special Thanks

Special thanks to Dr. Adam DJ Brett, Deborah Pratt, Alex Snow, and our volunteers.