is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, President of the Association of Indigenous Anthropologists (a section of the American Anthropological Association). She was reared in Oklahoma and is an enrolled member of the Choctaw Nation. She is also of documented Chickasaw ancestry. Her first book, Choctaw Nation: A Story of American Indian Resurgence (University of Nebraska Press 2007), is a story of tribal nation building in the modern era. It is the winner of the North American Indian Prose Award and was a finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award.