Gordon L. Yellowman, Sr., Chair
Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, gyellowman@cox.net, gyellowman@c-a-tribes.org
Gordon Yellowman is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes. He has extensive repatriation experience and was the first designated Cheyenne NAGPRA Representative for the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes. He served as a member of the Native American Indian Advisory Board at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History in Norman, Oklahoma. Gordon also served as a member of the Indian Task Force for the Department of Defense, Washington, DC. Gordon was the first Southern Plains Commissioner on the Burial Sites Protection and Repatriation Commission for the National Congress of the American Indian.  In addition to his background in repatriation work, he is a noted artist and cultural advisor, receiving the 2010 Red Earth Honored One award, the 2009 Historic Preservation Award from the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the 2002 Cultural Heritage Award from the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, Denver, Colorado. He has served as the curator of photographic exhibits at the Field Museum Chicago, Illinois and the Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado.  As an Adjunct Professor he teaches “Native American Art” at the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribal College, Southwestern Oklahoma State University, Weatherford, Oklahoma and is studying Art/Art History in the Native American Studies Program University of Oklahoma. Gordon currently serves as the Language Program Coordinator for the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes.
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T.J. Ferguson, Vice Chair
Anthropologist, Tucson, Arizona,tjf@wildblue.net
T. J. Ferguson owns an anthropological research company in Tucson, Arizona, where he also a Professor of Practice in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Arizona. He was educated at the University of Hawaii at Hilo (BA, 1973), the University of Arizona (M.A. in anthropology, 1976) and the University of New Mexico (Masters of Community and Regional Planning, 1986; and Ph.D. in anthropology, 1993). For thirty years, T. J. has conducted research into the ethnography, archaeology, history, and land use of tribes in the Southwest.  His collaborative research has included work with the Hopi Tribe, Jicarilla Apache Nation, Pueblo of Acoma, Pueblo of Laguna, Pueblo of San Juan, Pueblo of Zuni, San Carlos Apache Tribe, Tohono O’odham Nation, and White Mountain Apache Tribe. T. J. started working on repatriation issues in 1977, while he was employed at the Pueblo of Zuni. Since the passage of the National Museum of the American Indian Act and NAGPRA, he has assisted tribes, museums and federal agencies with research needed to document sacred objects, cultural patrimony and cultural affiliation. T. J. is the author of four books:  A Zuni Atlas (1985, with E. Richard Hart), Historic Zuni Architecture and Society:  An Archaeological Application of Space Syntax (1996), History is in the Land: :  Multivocal Tribal Traditions in Arizona’s San Pedro Valley (2006, with Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh), and Collaboration in Archaeological Practice, Engaging Descendant Communities (2008, co-edited with Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh), as well as numerous articles and book chapters on the cultural landscapes and archaeology of the Southwest.
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Jane E. Buikstra
Professor, Arizona State University,buikstra@asu.edu
Jane Buikstra received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1972. She is a Professor of Bioarchaeology, School of Human Evolution and Social Change, and Director of the Center for Bioarchaeological Research at Arizona State University. Professor Buikstra is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and past president of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists and the American Anthropological Association. She is presently president of the Center for American Archeology and former president of the Paleopathology Association. She is also a Fellow of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences and a Diplomate of the American Board of Forensic Anthropology. Her research interests include bioarchaeology, paleopathology, forensic anthropology, and paleodemography. She has conducted bioarchaeological research in several contexts, including mid-continental North America, the Iberian Peninsula, Colonial Argentina, the west-central Andes, and Mayan Mesoamerica. Professor Buikstra’s publications include numerous books and articles, among them Standards for Data Collection from Human Skeletal Remains (with Douglas Ubelaker) and The Bioarchaeology of Tuberculosis (with Charlotte Roberts). Her current research projects include investigating the evolutionary history of ancient tuberculosis in the Americas, based on archaeologically- recovered pathogen DNA.
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John F. C. Johnson is a Native Alaskan whose family is from the old Chugach (Sugpiaq) village of Nuchek in Prince William Sound. His father was a commercial fisherman from the Cordova and his wife is from the Athabaskin village of Nondalton. John has over twenty five years of experience in cultural resource management in south central Alaska and is currently the Vice President of Cultural Resources with the Chugach Alaska Corporation. John has also served on the Chugach board of directors for six years and is their longest serving employee for past thirty three years.  For the past fifteen years John has directed the Nuchek Spirit Camp where Alaska Natives from the villages within the Chugach Region come together to celebrate and share their Native culture on a remote island in the Gulf of Alaska.  He is also one of the founding directors of the Alaska Native Heritage Center in Anchorage, Alaska. John has been active in the documentation and conveyance of over two hundred and fifty prehistoric and historic sites from the Chugach Region that were selected under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. He has also been active in repatriations from across the United States and Europe.  John has published numerous books, articles, videos and posters on the Native cultures which pertain to the Chugach Region.
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Bonnie Newsom
Penobscot Indian Nation, bonnie.newsom@penobscotnation.org
Bonnie Newsom is a member of the Penobscot Indian Nation and serves as their Tribal Historic Preservation Officer. In this capacity, she ensures tribal compliance with the National Historic Preservation Act, identifies and manages historic properties on tribal lands, consults with federal and state agencies relative to historic site protection, participates in public education initiatives and serves as the tribal point of contact for all archaeological issues. She also provides staff support to the Wabanaki Intertribal Repatriation Committee and serves on the Maine Indian Tribal-State Commission.  Her former positions include working as a research archaeologist with Archaeological Research Consultants, of Ellsworth, Maine and serving as Assistant Director of the Wabanaki Center at the University of Maine. Bonnie holds a B.A. in Anthropology and an M.S. in Quaternary Studies from the University of Maine. Currently, she is a Ph.D. candidate in Anthropology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.  Her research interests include NAGPRA and cultural affiliation, indigenous archaeologies, tribal consultation, the archaeology of the Penobscot River Valley, and aboriginal ceramics. 
Bonnie has served on numerous boards and committees at both the local and national levels including the Abbe Museum, the Forest Society of Maine, the United South and Eastern Tribes Culture and Heritage Committee and NOAA's Marine Protected Areas Cultural Heritage Resources Working Group. Bonnie is the mother of four and lives with her husband Les in Eddington, Maine.  In her free time she enjoys tending her gardens, making jewelry, and spending time on the water and in the woods of Penobscot homeland.
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Shelby J. Tisdale
Vice President of Curatorial and Exhibitions, Autry National Center of the American West
tisdalesj@msn.com
Shelby Tisdale received her Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from the University of Arizona in 1997. She received her B.A. from the University of Colorado-Boulder where she studied anthropology and archaeology, and her M.A. from the University of Washington where she also majored in museum studies. She is currently the Vice President of Curatorial and Exhibitions at the Autry National Center of the American West in Los Angeles, which includes the Southwest Museum, Institute of the American West and the Institute of Women in the West. Shelby has over thirty-two years of combined experience in museums; anthropological, tribal museum and cultural resource management consulting; and, university teaching. She has published over thirty articles and book chapters relating to American Indian art and women in the west. She contributed to and directed the publication of the Oklahoma Book Award winning Woven Worlds: Basketry from the Clark Field Collection, for the Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Her book, Fine Indian Jewelry of the Southwest: The Millicent Rogers Museum Collection (Museum of New Mexico Press, 2006) received the Ralph Emerson Twitchell Book Award from the Historical Society of New Mexico and the Southwest Book Award from the Border Regional Library Association.  Her latest book, Pablita Velarde: In Her Own Words (Little Standing Spruce Publishing, 2012), is a full-length biography on this famous American Indian painter. Shelby became interested in repatriation in the early 1980s while working on her master’s thesis which resulted in a proposed repatriation policy for the School of American Research (now the School for Advanced Research). She reported on this at the Sacred Materials Conference held at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in 1985 and has been actively involved in recent repatriations at the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture/Laboratory of Anthropology in Santa Fe, New Mexico where she was the Director. She has served on the boards of the Society for Applied Anthropology and the Mountain-Plains Museum Association.
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