Dr. Joseph Dupris joins Brown University this year as NAISI visiting faculty, also affiliated with American Studies. He is a citizen of the Klamath Tribes (Klamath, Modoc, and Yahooskin Paiute whose homelands span southern Oregon and northern California). He is also of Big Pine Paiute and Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe ancestry. Dupris received a joint Ph.D. in Anthropology and Linguistics and M.A. in Linguistics - Native American Linguistics and Languages (NAMA) emphasis - from the University of Arizona. His doctoral research addresses issues around tribal language research with a focus on sustaining tribal polities through critical analyses of language, race, and nation. Dupris recently served as a Visiting Assistant Professor in Linguistics and Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, focusing on Native American and Indigenous Linguistics. The focus grounds language research in the epistemologies and lived experience of tribal peoples that use tributary knowledge from western linguistic inquiry while acknowledging the indigenizing, racializing, and minoritizing processes associated therein. This work aligns Dupris with broader capacity-building efforts across the linguistic sciences, such as those of Natives4Linguistics. Dupris is now collaborating with Modoc Nation, a sister tribe of Modoc who were exiled to Indian Territory 150 years ago, to establish critical language infrastructures in northeast Oklahoma. His hope is to help the Klamath Tribes and Modoc Nation work cooperatively through the UNESCO International Decade of Indigenous Languages 2022-2032 while developing a critical understanding of the political-legal histories that resulted in the outlawing and curtailment of their respective tribal languages. Dupris will teach four courses in Native American and Indigenous Studies at Brown.

Tarisa Little is Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of History and the Cogut Institute for the Humanities. She is a Settler and works with members of the Wyandot of Anderdon Nation. Her research focuses on Indigenous knowledge and ways of knowing. Her current projects focus on Wendat/Waⁿdat witches and Wendat/Waⁿdat engagement (forced and voluntary) with Western-style schooling. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Saskatchewan in Canada and was a visiting professor for two years at Colgate University in the Native American Studies Program.

Laura Pensa holds a degree in Anthropology from the Universidad de Buenos Aires and a PhD in Romance Languages and Literature from the University of Michigan, with a focus on Colonial Latin America and Indigenous Studies. She is interested in insurgent Indigenous groups of the South American lowlands, historical writing, critical cartography, and contemporary Latin American literature. She was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pennsylvania (2023-2024) and is currently a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow at Brown University (2024-2026). 

Mack Scott teaches courses that foreground the experiences of Indigenous communities and other targeted populations. His pedagogy focuses on community engagement, and his research explores the history and continuance of Native peoples throughout the Dawnland (New England). His current project traces the continuance of the Narragansett Nation from the pre-colonial to the modern era.   

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