Brown University Sophomore Ma'iingan E Wolf Garvin is one of six students selected as part of the 31st cohort of the Brown Mellon Mays Undergraduate Research Fellowship (MMUF) Program, a prestigious undergraduate fellowship involving research under a faculty mentor, funding support, and loan repayment to pursue graduate study in the humanities. The program aims to increase the number of underrepresented minorities in faculty positions at colleges and universities.

Ma’iingan plans to concentrate in Environmental Studies (Inequality track). Ma’iingan’s research is a multidisciplinary project at the intersection of environmental studies, linguistic anthropology, and critical Native American and Indigenous Studies. Using oral histories and ethnographic approaches, she plans to examine linguistic and traditional ecological knowledges of the Hoocak and Ojibwe peoples, specifically how Indigenous methods of land stewardship and ways of land caretaking can be incorporated into modern conservation and climate activism. In the future, Ma’iingan plans to continue her research in a PhD program in Ethnic or Indigenous Studies. She writes, “I know that being strongly rooted in communities here and at home will provide me with the foundation and frameworks I need to become a proficient researcher and teacher.”