WFOA Project: Coordinating Council

Elsie Whitehorn, Otoe-Missouria (Eagle), Diné (Tl’aashchi’i ), Iowa, Omaha, a lifelong student, researcher, and educator, she serves as the Tribal Historic Preservation Officer for the Otoe-Missouria Tribe striving to uplift and better her peoples and communities by honoring her ancestors, engaging in active participation, fostering community building, and cultivating strong, meaningful relationships. She is the daughter of the late Randy and the late Rose Whitehorn, granddaughter to the late Mark and late Elsie Whitehorn and the late Ralph and Irene Begay. She makes her home in Red Rock, Oklahoma with her husband Eric and cat Mario. She is a Ph.D. student in Information Studies at the University of Oklahoma with a M.S. in Higher Education Leadership from Northeastern State University and a B.B.A. in Management Information Systems from the University of Hawai’i at Manoa. She is honored to be on the Coordinating Council and co-leader for Creating Land-Based Commemorations.

Johnnie Jae is an Otoe-Missouria and Choctaw multimedia journalist, artist, speaker, advocate, and most importantly, a community builder. Their belief in the power of representation is a driving force. It propels them to work diligently, creating pathways for more authentic Native representation while amplifying Indigenous voices and addressing critical issues facing Native communities.

Jae is the founder of A Tribe Called Geek, an award-winning media platform for Indigenous Geek Culture and STEM. As a lifelong Indigenerd, Jae wanted to create a platform to highlight and celebrate Indigenous peoples’ contributions and achievements in Pop Culture and STEM. It was also their hope A Tribe Called Geek would also foster an inclusive community for Indigenerds to connect, collaborate and support one another, creating a sense of belonging.

In addition to their work with A Tribe Called Geek, Jae has made significant contributions as a writer, editor, podcaster, commentator, and producer for various media outlets. They have written articles, provided commentary, and produced content for Truthout, Native Max Magazine, Real News Network, Prism, Complex, Last Real Indians, CBC, and more.

Johnnie Jae’s advocacy work extends far beyond journalism. They are a tireless advocate for Indigenous and Human Rights, with a personal focus on disability justice. Openly discussing their own struggles with lupus and mental health, they aim to break the silence and stigma that prevent others from receiving the care and help they need. They have also co-founded Not Your Mascots and LiveIndigenousOK to address the misappropriation of Indigenous imagery and histories through Native mascots and stereotypes. Additionally, they are a co-founding member of the Fan Organizer Coalition, a community of fan organizers passionate about the power of fan activism for social change.

Marci Sue Black is a member of the Jiwere-Nutachi (Otoe-Missouria), and an Ioway descendant. Her artistic endeavors have included painting and drawing in an array of mediums, graphic design, digital art, traditional Indigenous mediums such as sewing regalia, beading, making jewelry,  leather handbags and belts with her company Black Elk Creations. Black has branched out further in her artistic pursuits as an Associate Producer and Script Screener with Deer Woman Productions. She is ready to share her unique perspective as a Jiwere-Nutachi mother, daughter, sister, auntie, artist and member of a large Indigenous community. 

Of all the things Black has been apart of, two stand out as her magnum opus both in the gravity of meaning and in service to the people in her tribe, “Marking the Heart” and the documentary for “Walking in the Footsteps of Our Ancestors.” MTH was a program that provided headstones for unmarked graves of enrolled Otoe-Missouria tribal members. Black designed Otoe-Missouria florals, clan animals and artwork for headstones that honored legacies and helped families heal. The “Walking in The Footsteps of Our Ancestors” documentary and project as a whole, has given her so much happiness and meaning in life on top of sharing beautiful stories, history and voices of her people. 

Billie Ann Tohee, a tribal elder and enrolled member of the Otoe-Missouria Tribe of Indians and a descendant of the Iowa Tribe of Oklahoma, brings a wealth of knowledge, wisdom, and compassion to the Center for Great Plains Studies' “Walking in the Footsteps of Our Ancestors.”

Tohee is the Executive Director of the National Indian Council on Aging headquartered in Albuquerque, New Mexico where she advocates for Native Elders across the nation. She grew up in Stillwater, Okla., and her permanent home is in Perkins, Okla. It’s important to Tohee to be able to visit and participate with the Otoe-Missouria and Iowa tribes as much as possible. It’s also important to her to live by her tribal traditions, customs, and beliefs that were taught to her from as she can remember, as much as possible in her daily life.

Tohee has a degree from the University of New Mexico in Political Science and a degree from the University of Oklahoma School of Law in Indigenous Law.

Melea Hoffman, Otoe-Missouria (Beaver Clan) and Pawnee, also known as Tse-sa-ru-ra-ka-ri-ku (The Princess of the Lodge), is a cultural anthropologist and researcher at the Otoe-Missouria Tribe in the Jíwere-Nutachi Wósgą Wókigo department. She is dedicated to preserving her heritage and strengthening her community through research, cultural consultation, and active participation.

Hoffman is the daughter of Georgia and Ralph Hoffman and comes from the William Atkins and Sam Carson families. She resides in a 110-year-old home, the only occupied house on the original allotment. Hoffman graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a degree in Anthropology.

In addition to her role as a researcher, she serves as a member of the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition and as an advisor for Walking in the Footsteps of Our Ancestors. She is also a cultural consultant for Nova. Hoffman's greatest passions include studying the history of the Otoe-Missouria people, avidly reading, and spending time with her three pugs. She is also an enthusiastic collector of antiques, relics, fossils, and miniature pottery.

Autumn Langemeier is the Coordinator for the Historical Marker Programs at History Nebraska. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in History and Psychology. She received her Master of Arts in History from the University of Nebraska at Kearney where she later lectured as an adjunct professor. Her research has focused on textiles and domestic labor, modern American women’s history, and material culture. Autumn Langemeier is an Affiliate Fellow with the Center for Great Plains Studies.

Travis Jensen is the Community Conservation Coordinator for Solidago Conservancy, a non-profit land trust organization that allies with partners to grow and protect a connected and resilient landscape in and around Lincoln and Lancaster County, Nebraska.

Prior to joining Solidago, Travis enjoyed a 25+ year career in education, first as a high school English teacher in Lubbock, Texas and Lincoln, Nebraska and then at Nebraska Wesleyan University where he served as an administrator and faculty member teaching primarily nontraditional (adult) and transfer students.  When he’s not working, Travis enjoys spending time outside, traveling, entertaining, puttering, and doing pretty much anything with his wife, Karla.

Mark Brohman is the Executive Director of Wachiska Audubon Society and Affiliate Fellow of the Center for Great Plains Studies. He also served as the Executive Director of the Nebraska Environmental Trust from 2006-2021. He's a graduate of Chadron State College (biology) and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (J.D. in law and Master's in Forestry, Fisheries and Wildlife). Brohman grew up on a ranch in Custer County, Neb., near Broken Bow.

Jason “the Birdnerd” St. Sauver is the Senior Education Manager for Audubon Great Plains at Spring Creek Prairie Audubon Center.  With over 20 years of conservation and education experience, St. Sauver is an expert in birds and environmental education and outreach programming for all ages and abilities. He has won awards from the National Audubon Society and the Nebraska Legacy Project as an outstanding educator and is the creator of the inclusive Let’s Go Birding Together program and co-creator of the Return of the Thunderbirds annual festival at the Lincoln Indian Center, Inc., with Renee Sans Souci. When Jason isn’t working, you can probably find him birding or thinking about going birding.

Annika K. Johnson, Ph.D., serves as the Stacy & Bruce Simon Curator of Native American Art at the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Nebraska. Community engagement is central to her curatorial and research practices, which focus on Indigenous art of the Plains from the nineteenth century to the present. Her recent curatorial projects include Wendy Red Star: The Indian Congress (2021), Faces from the Interior: The North American Portraits of Karl Bodmer (2022-2023), and the reinstallation of the Joslyn’s American art galleries (2024). Johnson received her doctorate in art history from the University of Pittsburgh in 2019 and has held fellowships at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts.

Dr. Will Stoutamire is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Nebraska at Kearney (UNK), where he directs the undergraduate minor in public history and the online Public History MA programs. He holds a PhD in History with distinction from Arizona State University (ASU). While at ASU, he worked as a contract historian for the National Park Service on a variety of cultural resource management projects in the American Southwest. Prior to joining the faculty at UNK, he served for five years as director of UNK’s G.W. Frank Museum of History and Culture. His research interests include the history of early museums and preservation activities in the American West, with special emphasis on the role these efforts played in the larger settler colonial project.

Dr. Zhenghong Tang is a professor and the program director in the Community and Regional Planning Program, and also serves as a professor in the Landscape Architecture Program at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His research interest covers environmental planning, hazard mitigation, and geospatial science and technology.

Dr. Liahnna Stanley (she/they) is Assistant Professor of Communication Studies and Indigenous Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Liahnna’s scholarly inquiry is focused on the intersections of rhetoric, Indigenous studies, and queer and feminist studies, with community serving as a primary analytical lens. Her research and teaching encompass three main areas: Native American literature and Indigenous futurism; Indigenous art practices and digital storytelling; and advancing theories and methods that address ongoing histories, structures, and practices of empire and colonization. Her current research examines the ways in which Indigenous futurism in speculative fiction provides anticolonial tools for envisioning and enacting transformative, community-based praxes that reimagine alternative intellectual trajectories and confront regimes of violence and dispossession. Liahnna is a descendant of the Poarch Band of Creek Indians through her father and of mixed Euro-American settler heritage through her mother.

Professor Jessica A. Shoemaker (Steinhart Foundation Distinguished Professor of Law, University of Nebraska College of Law) is a recent Andrew Carnegie Fellow working on issues of land justice across the American countryside, with particular focus on the future of our food system and the possibilities of sustainable rural livelihoods. She previously served as Fulbright Canada Research Chair in Aboriginal Legal and Resource Rights at the University of Alberta (studying Indigenous-led land reforms) and Skadden Fellow with Farmers’ Legal Action Group (working on diverse agriculture and energy matters). She is a Founding Fellow of the Rural Futures Institute and currently co-directs The Rural Reconciliation Project at the University of Nebraska.

Dr. LuAnn Wandsnider, a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, specializes in landscape archaeology. With dual undergraduate degrees in Anthropology and Geology from the University of Wisconsin, as well as an M.S. and Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of New Mexico, Dr. Wandsnider’s career includes a Fulbright Fellowship in India and pioneering work in no-collection archaeological documentation. This approach respects Indigenous ownership by leaving artifacts in situ while gathering essential data.

Her research spans from studying pit hearth cooking in western Nebraska, which has implications for understanding Indigenous health, to examining resilience among historic Great Plains settlers, documented through Solomon Butcher’s photography. Currently, she collaborates on an oral history project focused on Great Plains rural producers, aiming to preserve and share local ecological knowledge across generations.

Amy Lonetree is an enrolled citizen of the Ho-Chunk Nation and a Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Cruz.  She received her Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, and her research focuses on Indigenous history, visual studies, and museum studies. Her publications include Decolonizing Museums: Representing Native America in National and Tribal Museums; a co-edited book, The National Museum of the American Indian: Critical Conversations; and a co-authored volume, People of the Big Voice: Photographs of Ho-Chunk Families by Charles Van Schaick, 1879-1942. She is currently writing a visual history of the Ho-Chunk Nation.

Chip Thomas, aka jetsonorama, is a photographer, public artist and physician who worked in a small clinic on the Navajo Nation for 36 years. There he coordinated the Painted Desert Project. He describes this as a community building dialog which manifested as a constellation of murals painted by artists from the Navajo Nation as well as from around the world.

Thomas’ own public artwork consists of enlarged black and white photographs pasted onto structures along the roadside primarily on the Navajo Nation. His motivation is to reflect back to the community the love they’ve shared with him over the years.

Thomas was a 2018 Kindle Project gift recipient and in 2020 he was one of a handful of artists chosen by the UN to recognize the 75th anniversary of the UN’s founding. Selected artists were asked to generate work that contributes to the envisioning and shaping of a more resilient and sustainable future.

Brandon Cobb joined The Nature Conservancy’s team as an Indigenous Partnerships Program Manager in 2022. Cobb is from Edmond, Okla., and is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. He graduated from Yale University with a degree in Environmental Science and a concentration in sustainability and natural resource use.

As a 2022 Claire M. Hubbard Young Leaders in Conservation Fellow, Cobb chose to develop guidance for building and maintaining relationships with Tribal nations, primarily in Nebraska. From there, he organized and led the first Nebraska Intertribal Conservation Summit. As a result of that Summit, TNC created Cobb’s new position, and he is now advancing projects among Tribes both in and outside of Nebraska. These projects include Buffalo restoration with the Ponca Tribe, cultural fire with the Ioway Tribe, and co-management with the Washoe Tribe.

Lance M. Foster (Irogre: Finds What is Sought, Bear Clan), b. 1960, is a member of the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska, of the Ioway Nation. Raised in Montana, he received a B.A. in Anthropology and Native American studies from University of Montana as well as an M.A. in Anthropology and an M.L.A. in Landscape Architecture from Iowa State University. He’s an alumnus of the Institute of American Indian Arts. He was the Director of the Native Rights, Land and Culture division of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, a Historical Landscape Architect for the National Park Service, and an archaeologist for the U.S. Forest Service. He taught at the University of Montana—Helena College of Technology. He currently serves his tribe as THPO (Tribal Historic Preservation Officer), consulting for the tribe on environmental and cultural compliance, founded the tribal museum, is an Ioway language advocate, and NAGPRA officer. He serves on the Indian Advisory Council of Iowa’s Office of the State Archaeologist. He is the author of The Indians of Iowa, and has appeared in the documentaries America’s Lost Landscape: The Tallgrass Prairie (2006), Lost Nation: The Ioway series (2007, 2013), and Life Before Fairfield (2017). An artist and educator, he resides with his wife in White Cloud, Kan. He was elected Vice Chairman of the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska and served from 2019-2023. He led the effort in establishing Ioway Tribal National Park (Baxoje Mowotanani) in Kansas-Nebraska and the return of our tribal boarding school, the Presbyterian Mission in Kansas, both of which were achieved. He is on the board of NATHPO as Southern Plains member, and on the board of the Nebraska Chapter of The Nature Conservancy. He has represented the Iowa tribe during tribal consultations with Blood Run NHL and Good Earth State Park since 2014.