Robert Geary
Robert Geary is an enrolled tribal citizen of the Elem Indian Colony of Pomo Indians in Lake County, California. He is currently a Xaitsnoo language teacher, traditional ceremonial roundhouse leader, and founder and president of the Clear Lake Pomo Cultural Preservation Foundation, a nonprofit organization for protection and preservation of tribal cultural resources. Geary has been a guest speaker at several academic institutions, including Purdue University, Stanford, UC Berkeley, and UC Davis, on language revitalization and cultural awareness. Currently, Geary is employed with the Habematolel Pomo of Upper Lake, Cultural Resources Department as the Tribal Historic Preservation Officer (THPO).
Sherrie Smith-Ferri
Sherrie Smith-Ferri, PhD, is a member of Sonoma County’s Dry Creek Rancheria Band of Pomo Indians and also descended from Bodega Bay Miwok people. She recently retired from a thirty-year career as executive director and curator of Ukiah’s Grace Hudson Museum. Smith-Ferri has extensively studied and written about Pomo basketry and Pomo peoples’ history as well as participated in several exhibitions on the same subjects. She is currently working for Dry Creek Rancheria to create a tribal museum and archives and is the author of the forthcoming book From Diggers Bend to River Rock: Dry Creek Rancheria People and History.
Meyo Marrufo
Meyo Marrufo is Eastern Pomo from the Clear Lake basin. While her tribe is from Robinson Rancheria, she has lived and learned from other California tribes, including Yurok, Hupa, Maidu, and Miwok territories. Marrufo has learned from many gifted artists over the years, focusing on cultural arts, regalia making, and traditional foods and cooking techniques. She teaches classes in Northern California in these methods, focused on continuing this knowledge and renewing it for future generations. Her digital artwork shows examples of basket patterns, traditional dancing, and Pomo life, and is shown throughout California. In addition, as a Tribal Environmental Director, Meyo works hands-on with the protection of the Pomo cultural landscape. She is working directly to impact the restoration and protection of our tribal lifeways.
Arthur Amiotte
Arthur Amiotte is an Oglala Lakota artist, art historian, and educator from the Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota. He received his Master’s of Interdisciplinary Studies in 1983 from the University of Montana at Missoula and became a professor of Native American art history at Brandon University, Manitoba. By 1986, he pursued his artistic career, establishing a studio in Custer, South Dakota. He has participated in over 100 exhibitions, exhibiting paintings, sculptures, and textiles works. His works are included in major museums such as the Denver Art Museum, The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and The Hood Museum of Art, among others. He has also curated numerous exhibitions on the culture of the tribes on the Great Plains.
Dorene Red Cloud
Dorene Red Cloud is an enrolled member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe. She received her Master of Arts in American Indian Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, Bachelor of Fine Arts in Ceramics at the University of Michigan, and Associate of Fine Arts in Museum Studies at the Institute of American Indian Arts. Red Cloud worked at the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution as a Repatriation Research Specialist from 1999-2003. After a number of years spent working outside the museum field, she joined the Eiteljorg Museum as assistant curator of Native American art in October 2016. Originally, from Chicago, IL, Red Cloud currently resides in Indianapolis, IN, and when not working, she is either creating a new art piece or pursuing mid-century treasure hunts at a local yard sale or antique store.
Healoha Johnston
Healoha Johnston lives in Kaiwiki, Hawai‘i and is Curator of Asian Pacific American Women’s Cultural History at the Smithsonian Institution where she is part of the American Women’s History Initiative and the Asian Pacific American Center. Johnston’s exhibitions and research projects explore connections between historic visual culture and contemporary art with a particular focus on the socio-political underpinnings that inform those relationships. Johnston served as Chief Curator and Curator of the Arts of Hawaiʻi, Oceania, Africa, and the Americas at the Honolulu Museum of Art, and has worked in contemporary art galleries, arts and cultures non-profit organizations, and NOAA’s Pacific National Monument program. She received her BA and MA in Art History with a focus on Pacific Art from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.