FOCUS
Melissa’s research interests cohere around examining the social structures of everyday, ongoing settler colonialism in the U.S. while also exploring Indigenous knowledge systems that persist in Native Nations and Indigenous communities through state and tribal policies. To explore and understand the particularities, she draws on participatory, Indigenous methodologies and takes an interdisciplinary approach.
MORE ABOUT MELISSA
Melissa is a citizen of the Manitoba Métis Federation and a first-generation unenrolled descendant of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa. She also has settler lineages including German and French. Melissa grew up in Montana and revels in spending time with her family, practicing archery, traveling, reading, hunting, and hiking with her dog Koy, all of which shape the cultural, relational, and personal experiences that continuously inform her thinking, writing, research, teaching, and creativity.
DISSERTATION GRANT AWARDEE — SPRING 2024
Ongoing U.S. Settler Colonialism and Indigenous Knowledge in Montana Lawmaking
This project has two aims: 1) to detail settler colonialism as an ongoing social structure; 2) to emphasize the knowledge and futurity of Native Peoples. This project takes place in Montana and analyzes state legislation (e.g., land/water policy), observes state legislative spaces, and centers the experiences of Native legislators—and those adjacent to them—to identify, co-theorize, and articulate ongoing settler colonialism in how it appears, impacts, limits, and harms the work Native lawmakers do at the state level in Montana. Additionally, this study strives to highlight the experiences of Native legislators in Montana to understand what’s going well, how Indigenous knowledge and practices persist amidst a settler colonial governmental structure, how they advance tribal sovereignty at the state level, and what their theories of change are.
TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE HPRS DISSERTATION AWARDS, CLICK HERE.
