ADVISORY COMMITTEE

Della Warrior is an enrolled member of the Otoe-Missouria tribe, Director emeritus of the Museum of Indian Arts and culture, and current President and CEO of the MICA Group. Dr. Warrior’s longstanding commitment to education and the arts is reflected by her widely acknowledged career. In the early 90’s Dr. Warrior served the Institute for American Indian Arts as Director of Development and later stepped into her tenure as president, securing a permanent home for the institution as well as raising over one hundred million dollars for IAIA over a twelve-year period. In addition, Dr. Warrior is the first and only woman to date to have served as the Chairperson and Chief Executive Officer for the Otoe-Missouria Tribe. Dr. Warrior was inducted into the Oklahoma Women's Hall of Fame in 2007.

Byron Aspaas (Diné) is Red Running into the Water, born for Bitter Water. His creative practice is one that uses experience to etch landscape onto white space. Aspaas holds a BA and MFA in Creating Writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts and he is currently on faculty at San Juan College. His work has appeared in a wide array of journals and anthologies including which include: RedInk, Yellow Medicine Review, 200 New Mexico Poems, Weber: The Contemporary West, As/Us: A Space for Women of the World, Semicolon, The Denver Quarterly, International Writing Program Collections, The Rumpus, and CloudThroat. He is Red Running into the Water, born for Bitter Water. Byron resides northeast of the Four Sacred Mountains. Currently, Byron is working on a collection of essays, short stories, and poems. Byron has been part of the Identity Project family as a Poetry Master Artist since 2020.

Alfredo Celedón Luján is acting President of the National Council of Teachers of English and Dean of Students at Monte del Sol Charter School in Santa Fe, NM. Now in his 45th year as an educator, Alfredo has been a teacher and coach for the Pojoaque Valley Schools, Native American Prep School, and Santa Fe Prep School. Alfredo is a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow, a Golden Apple Fellow, and in 2017 has been named the recipient of the Leadership Award for the Advancement of People of Color by the National Council of Teachers of English. He has been a writer-in-residence for the Anchorage and Mat-Su School Districts in Alaska and at the Noepe Center for Literary Arts in Martha’s Vineyard. Alfredo graduated from New Mexico State University with a Bachelor of Science in Physical Education and English, Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College with a Masters in English, and is currently completing a Master of Letters Degree.

Elyzabeth Joy Holford‘s career reflects a deep commitment to social justice and the arts, punctuated by a life-long commitment to creating spaces that promote equitable, collaborative opportunities for growth. Holford recently served as the Executive Director of the Vermont Studio Center, and as founding senior executive for the Digital Living Research Commons in Denmark, where she created and led a dynamic space for artists, researchers, business leaders, and policymakers to explore research and practice at the intersections of culture, technology, art, human interactions, social media, and infrastructure. In this role, she facilitated MoRM (the Museum of Random Memory), an ongoing series of performative arts-based public interventions designed to spark deeper reflection around digital literacy. A sampling of other positions Holford has held include Equality Ohio (Columbus, OH) where she served as executive director and Oberlin College (Oberlin, OH) where she served as Director of Entrepreneurship.

Phyllis Pettit Nassi is enrolled in the Otoe-Missouria tribe and member of the Cherokee Nation. As Associate Director of Research & Science for Native American Outreach at Huntsman Cancer Institute (University of Utah), Phyllis has designed a comprehensive outreach program dedicated to providing Native Americans with high-quality, culturally sensitive, and holistic health care. Formerly a Ph.D. student at the University of Utah’s College of Social Work, Phyllis has dedicated her career to promoting the health and wellbeing of Native American communities though cancer outreach, education, screening and early detection programs. On a personal level, Phyllis is deeply passionate about supporting innovate, grassroots efforts that champion the voices of Native American youth through the arts.