Elizabeth Sumida Huaman (Wanka/Quechua) is Professor and Chair of the Department of American Indian Studies in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. She studies the relationship between Indigenous lands, cultural practices, state, community, and family environmental policies, and in and out-of-school ecological learning with Indigenous communities and Tribal institutions in the Americas. Centering Indigenous Knowledge Systems, her work examines several themes—first, the interfaces between modernity, development, and Indigenous places; second, Indigenous place-based learning via community-based educational design and land-based pedagogies; and third, Indigenous local and global frameworks and enactments of human and earth rights. Her most recent research and education projects include, 1) Indigenous land stewardship and global environmental shift in Peru and Ecuador; 2) Post-conflict Andean earth and human rights and reciprocities and family- and community-based education; 3) American Indian scientists, Tribal Colleges and Universities, and STEM learning for Indigenous self-determination; 4) The histories and futures of small Indigenous schools across the Americas; and 5) Labor, violence, nature, and life aspirations among Quechua and Indigenous women. Her edited books aim to contribute Indigenous Studies teaching materials to classrooms while building a sense of writing fellowship and solidarity among senior and new Indigenous scholars and ally researchers. Examples include Indigenous research design: Transnational perspectives in practice and Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Research Methodologies (both with Nathan D. Martin, Canadian Scholars’ Press). She is the lead editor of the two-volume SAGE Encyclopedia of Indigenous Education project, co-editor of AERA Open, and her research has been featured in AlterNative, Anthropology & Education Quarterly, Cultural Studies of Science Education, and the Journal of American Indian Education.
Educational Background
- Ed.D.: Education, Teachers College, Columbia University
- Ed.M.: Education, Harvard University Graduate School of Education
- B.A.: Undergraduate Studies, Dartmouth College
Specialties
- Indigenous Knowledge Systems
- Indigenous environmental and educational rights
- Indigenous and decolonial research design
- Indigenous nature-mediated and place-based education
- Tribal and Indigenous STEAM learning and research