I joined the faculty of the Indiana University Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology in 2004, having returned to Indiana from the University of Oklahoma, where I had served as a professor of anthropology and as curator of ethnology in the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History. Prior to going to the University of Oklahoma, I was affiliated with the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where I served as Curator of Anthropology. The opportunity to participate in the Native American studies community at Indiana University, particularly the American Indian Studies Research Institute, was a major factor motivating my return to IU, as was the chance to join one of the world’s leading centers for the study of folklore and ethnomusicology.
My research centers on ethnographic collaboration (since 1993) with the Yuchi and other Woodland Indian communities living in eastern and central Oklahoma. Following my original doctoral research, my positions at the Gilcrease Museum and the University of Oklahoma facilitated this work by enabling me to maintain long-term relationships with Yuchi friends, while also giving me the opportunity to expand my circle of contacts and experiences throughout the region.
This background has been particularly valuable because a central concern of my work is understanding the regional dynamics of ceremonial visitation that both facilitate the formation of an overarching Woodland cultural and social world and the perpetuation of distinct tribal identities. My work at present focuses on this pattern in ethnographic terms, but my long-term goal is to work back ethnohistorically to form a clearer understanding of the same patterns of intertribal social interaction as they have unfolded in the past. The social and religious conditions that shaped the work of the Shawnee prophet among eastern tribes are an obvious example. My general approach combines a concern with social systems derived from sociology and social anthropology with an interest in the systems of meaning that have traditionally been the focus of American cultural anthropology. My method, one associated with folkloristics and linguistic anthropology, is to focus closely on genres of cultural performance, such as the visual arts, narrative, oratory, festival, dance and music.
My experience as a curator has also entailed many of the responsibilities typically associated with a public folklorist—collaboration with tradition bearers, exhibition development, and the planning of programs that bring local cultural traditions to wider publics. I continue to work in museum contexts and to teach courses related to museum work and public folklore.
At both Indiana University and the University of Oklahoma, I work with a number of graduate students who are pursuing related studies in Woodland Indian country, but I also mentor students whose studies are focused elsewhere in Indian Country or who are addressing research topics related to my interests elsewhere in the world.
