Indigenous Graduate Student Association

The Indigenous Graduate Student Association (IGSA) at Cornell serves as a forum for graduate students to discuss cultural, social, political, and educational concerns and to network with other Native students and organizations. IGSA actively recruits students and promotes interaction between the Cornell community and Native Nations.

The mission of IGSA is to foster community building among Indigenous Graduate and Professional Students and our allies, to enhance personal, academic and professional growth and development in a fun, stable, peaceful family environment and to serve as a conduit for graduate and professional student issues and concerns.

Membership

IGSA members are from a number of tribal Nations and Cornell University graduate programs. To become a member of IGSA or for more information please contact one of the officers.

2012-2013  IGSA Officers

Co-Chair : Kianga Lucas (Anthropology)

Co-Chair : Namgyal Tsepak (Anthropology)

Secretary: Noe Ronen (CIPA)

Research Interests

These research profiles represent just some of our members’ work.

Ashley Elizabeth Smith
(Narantsouak Kennebec Abenaki)
Anthropology Ph.D. Student
Interests: Land, Place-making, Performance of History and Memory, Memorial, Embodiment, Knowledge, Indigeneity, Identity Politics, Native New England

Virginia Kennedy
English Ph. D. Candidate
Virginia focuses on conservation ethics in literature, particularly how nature and the notion of saving/protecting/using/living with/in nature (the biosphere) is communicated in American Lit from the 19th century to the present and American Indian literature in the same period.  

Morgan Ruelle
Natural Resources M.S./Ph.D. Student
Morgan is designing a participatory action research project with elders in the Standing Rock Sioux Nation (North/South Dakota).  He is interested in how local ecological knowledge and institutional scientific data can be used to create habitat models for culturally-significant plants. Can these GIS models help indigenous communities identify, access and conserve populations of key plant species.

Andrew Curley
(Diné)
Development Sociology Graduate Student
Research Area: coal, energy, natural resources and economic "development" on the Navajo Nation and American Indian reservations.

Mike Carpentier
(Bahweting Anishinaabe, Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians)
Anthropology Ph. D. student
Language treatment and revitalization (specifically Anishinaabemowin, but with comparative work in other native languages); identity and cultural maintenance through language programs and curriculum development; orthography development; sovereignty, nationhood, and decolonization.

Scott Perez
(Mohawk)
Natural Resources Ph. D. Candidate
His dissertation is on how cultural constructs affect the working relationship between non-Native academic environmental researchers and the people of the Akwesasne Mohawk Territory. Scott also has research interests in Indigenous Knowledge and Western Science, Social Justice and Sustainability, and Sustainable Agriculture. He is also working as Tribal Liaison for Cornell's Department of Entomology on the Lost Ladybug Project and teaching Environmental and Indigenous Studies at Wells College.

Simon Tu
(Apache/Yaqui/Mexican)
Government Ph.D. Student
Comparative politics, comparative migration, international political economy, social movements, Latin American politics, and race and ethnic politics. His dissertation topic will be on Latin American indigenous social movements. 

Jason Corwin
(Seneca)
Jason is doing participatory action research with a multimedia narrative-based environmental and social justice program for teenagers who are at risk for criminalization and incarceration.