Keynotes
Robin Zape-tah-hol-ah Minthorn
Robin Zape-tah-hol-ah Minthorn, Ph.D., Professor and Chair of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Oklahoma. Dr. Minthorn (Kiowa, Umatilla, Nez Perce, Apache, Assiniboine) is a nationally recognized scholar and author known for her work supporting Native students in higher education and for cultivating “heartwork” that centers the needs of tribal communities. She is the current president-elect of the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE), the first Native American to hold the position.
Dr. Minthorn has co-edited numerous influential publications, including “Indigenous Leadership in Higher Education,” “Reclaiming Indigenous Research in Higher Education” and “Unsettling Settler Colonial Education: The Transformational Indigenous Praxis Model.” She has worked in New Mexico, Washington and Oklahoma to strengthen educational systems that support Native youth.
Featured Speakers
Dr. Irene Anderson-Bare
Dr. Irene Anderson-Bare, a Suqpiag Alaskan Native and enrolled member of Koniag and Afognak Native Corporations, has been an educator for three decades. She has dedicated the vast majority of her career to the young people and families of the Tulalip Tribal community. Her work in Tulalip is shaped by the teachings of her own people, especially her parents, but also by the young people, families, and Native educators she has come to know and love in Tulalip and broader Coast Salish territories.
Irene is an innovative leader who has extensive experiences as a classroom teacher, art teacher, literacy specialist, and data/intervention/academic acceleration leader. Irene has deep respect for what we can and must learn from and alongside young people and by creating communities the way our ancestors did. Through relationality, Irene leverages the voices of students and families to shape learning spaces that are humanizing, affirming, and rich in culture.
Dr. Chelsea Craig
Dr. Chelsea Craig, a citizen of the Tulalip Tribes of Washington, believes that all her work in education and in her family and community must be pleasing to her ancestors. She works everyday to help create a beautiful life for her grandchildren and the generations to come. Chelsea believes she has been called to contribute to the healing of her community through education.
Chelsea has been an elementary school librarian, classroom teacher, literacy specialist, cultural specialist and is now a principal. All of Chelsea’s work over the last 25+ years has been in her home community of the Tulalip Tribes.
Dr. Anthony B. Craig
Dr. Anthony B. Craig is a citizen of the Yakama Nation and has lived with his family in the Tulalip Tribal community for the last 25 years where he has been a teacher, instructional coach, elementary school principal, and district office administrator. He is currently on faculty at the University of Washington and directs a doctoral program in educational leadership and policy studies.
Anthony believes in the power of tribal lifeways to answer all of our questions and guide us to more just and abundant realities. His work as an educator has focused on reimagining the possibilities of formal education as we simultaneously dismantle the harmful systems as we know them while building more humanizing, culturally-based schools that truly serve all of our young people, families, and communities.