Pathways Advisory Group

Navajo

Catherine is a member of the Navajo Nation and is the Director of First Nations Development Institute’s Strengthening Tribal and Community Institutions program area. Catherine joined First Nations in 2008 and is based out of the organization’s Colorado office. As one of First Nations’ directors of programs, she provides strategic leadership, management, and direction for several First Nations program areas. Catherine leads First Nations’ Native Arts Initiative and the First Americans’ Cultural Treasures Initiative. Through these initiatives, First Nations supports community partner organizations with general operating and program support grants and training and technical assistance to elevate their work in community to sustain Native knowledge systems and lifeways. Catherine also leads First Nations’ Native Fundraisers Community of Practice, which supports emerging Native grant writers and fundraisers with strategies and tools to increase organizational capacity and sustainability and ensure long-term service to their communities. This initiative also equips community partners with tools to ignite narrative change through strengths-based messaging and counter negative and false perceptions held about Native people and communities by the general public and mainstream philanthropy.

Ninilchik Tribe, Alutiiq/Sugpiaq

Mother, advocate, life-long learner, salmon lover, teacher, baker, hiker.

Nadia is an art historian and museum consultant based in Homer, Alaska. She loves supporting artists and exploring how the arts make us more connected to each other and our environments. She is happy to be connected to the Native Pathways program in a small way as a member of the Pathways advisory group.  

Comanche (not enrolled), Navajo (in-law)

Pragmatist Aesthete, Family, Relations, Responsibility, Curious.

Monenerkit has a 24-year career in museums and is currently Director of Community Engagement for the Heard Museum, Phoenix, Arizona. He is also engaged in the field with the U.S. Department of Interior, Indian Arts and Crafts Board as one of four Commissioners. He is Vice President of the Museum Association of Arizona since 2018. He and his wife Verna have been married 20 years and have two daughters in college.

Dr. Jen Shannon joined the National Museum of the American Indian as a program manager and curator in May 2022. She oversees the Community Loans Program which partners with Native communities to bring NMAI collections closer to home and to support exhibition and professional development in tribal communities. As a curator, she conducts community-based research with Native communities–in particular, working on community engaged comics and culturally informed collections care. Jen is on leave from the University of Colorado Boulder, where for twelve years she has been a museum curator and an associate professor of cultural anthropology and museum studies. Her research focuses on changing museum practices and disrupting dominant historical and contemporary narratives through collaboration with Indigenous peoples. She is deeply committed to collaborative and public anthropology. She is a Whiting Foundation Public Engagement Fellow, co-hosted SAPIENS: A Podcast for Everything Human for three years, and is currently co-producing NAGPRA Comics and the Kumeyaay Visual Storytelling Project. She is also the author of Our Lives: Collaboration, Native Voice, and the Making of the National Museum of the American Indian (SAR Press 2014). You can find out more about her work here: https://jenshannonanthro.weebly.com/. 

Tlingit

Laura is the director of the s'gʷi gʷi ʔ altxʷ House of Welcome Longhouse Education and Cultural Center at The Evergreen State College, a public service center with a national and international focus to support and promote Indigenous arts and cultures through education, cultural preservation, creative expression, and economic development . s'gʷi gʷi ʔ altxʷ House of Welcome, is the first of its kind built on a college campus. In her work, Laura oversees the Indigenous Arts Campus, comprised of the fiber arts studio and the carving studio complex and a team that supports individual artist grant making, artist residencies and workshops in a 4-state region, artist gatherings, cultural events, art markets and gallery exhibitions.

Laura is a citizen of Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska and specifically the Gan’aax’adi clan-of Klawock, Alaska. She is a daughter of Pearl Peratrovich who is the daughter of Lizzy Walter and Nick Peratrovich.  She is Dutch on her father’s side. 

Laura has a master’s degree in Higher Education and Student Affairs from Indiana University-Bloomington. She has been at the House of Welcome since 1999 as assistant director and then as director. Prior to that, she served as a financial aid counselor and oversaw the student employment program at the college. Prior to Evergreen she worked at Kansas State University and Indiana University supporting diversity and equity initiatives for undergraduate and graduate students of color.

“My personal vision is to create opportunities for Indigenous Peoples that support their traditional values through art, culture and identity.”

Ron is a traditional pueblo potter from Isleta and Taos Pueblo in New Mexico. He is a graduate of the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) and is an international award-winning artist. He also has a bachelor’s degree in Indigenous Liberal Studies from IAIA. His expertise includes 20 years of community and leadership development, specializing in the area of building sustainable economic and leadership development in Indigenous global communities.

Ihanktonwan Dakota & Oglala Lakota

Cecily Engelhart (she/her) is a Master Certified Life Coach, known by clients as “Your Dream Life’s Hype Chick.” She helps clients who are feeling burnt out, trapped, and drained of enthusiasm to decolonize, dismantle systems of oppression, and cultivate more joy. When Cecily isn’t coaching, she hosts events in the 1904 Victorian home her family bought and is restoring on her reservation. She can also be found spending time with her family playing games, cooking, baking, and dancing in the kitchen. She also continues her creative expression as the owner of Rosie Matȟó, her jewelry and home decor business.