America's Weekend Speakers' Biographies

Candace Greene, North American Ethnologist and Collections and resource Officer, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution (Ph.D., University of Oklahoma)

Candace Greene is an ethnologist with the Collections and Archives Program at the Smithsonian and teaches anthropology at George Washington University. Her research focuses on Native North American art and material culture, especially Plains Indian drawings, working principally with Kiowa and Cheyenne people in understanding materials from those communities and making them more accessible to tribal members. She is the author of 100 Summers: A Kiowa Calendar (forthcoming 2008); The Year the Stars Fell: Lakota Winter Counts at the Smithsonian, ed. with Russell Thornton (2007); Silver Horn: Master Illustrator of the Kiowa (2001), and with Robert Leopold, Lakota Winter Counts (www.wintercounts.si.edu).

Tim McCleary, Professor of Anthropology, Little Big Horn College

Tim McCleary teaches at Little Bighorn College, the Apsáalooke or Crow Indian Tribal College for the past eighteen years and has lived on the reservation in the Two Leggings area of the Black Lodge District for twenty years. His lifelong interest in how different cultures perceive the world lead him to the field of anthropology. Through his studies he has examined various aspects of the historic and contemporary culture of the Apsáalooke people. This research has covered such varied topics as the legal battles of the Native American Church in Montana, the rise of Pentecostalism on the Crow Indian Reservation, and the cultural, historical, and religious significance of land to the Apsáalooke people. This most recent interest has guided him to study the meaning and interpretation of Apsáalooke produced rock-art.

I. Castle McLaughlin, Associate Curator of North American Ethnography, Peabody Museum (Ph.D., Columbia University)

Castle McLaughlin is a social anthropologist with research interests in politics and political economy, art and visual culture, North American Indians, and the American West, both past and present. She has conducted fieldwork on Native American ranching, wild horses, and the contemporary Native American art market. Her recent work has focused on the Lewis and Clark expedition and bicentennial. She curated the exhibition, From Nation to Nation, featuring the Peabody’s collection of Native American objects collected by Lewis and Clark and published a comprehensive study of the collection in Arts of Diplomacy: Lewis and Clark’s Indian Collection (2003). She is currently researching Plains warrior art in the Peabody’s collections and is co-curator of Wiyohpiyata: Lakota Images of the Contested West.

Andrew E. Masich, President of the Senator John Heinz Pittsburgh Regional History Center. (M.A., University of Arizona)

Andrew Masich is a recognized authority on the preservation and creative interpretation of history, and serves on the American Association of Museum's Accreditation Commission and has led the American Association for State and Local History's CEO Forum. His published works include Cheyenne Dog Soldiers: A Ledgerbook of Coups and Combat with David Halaas (1997), Halfbreed: The Remarkable True Story of George Bent—Caught Between the Worlds of the Indian and the White Man (2004) and The Civil War in Arizona: The Story of the California (2006).

Byron Olson,Tribal archaeologist, Lakota Sioux Nation (M.A., U. Arizona)

Byron Olson, as the Lakota NAGPRA representative, has been working closely with the Peabody Museum and Houghton Library in researching the origins and significance of the “Half Moon ledgerbook.”

Sam Tager, Director of Exhibitions, Peabody Museum (B.F.A., Massachusetts College of Art)

Sam Tager is Wiyohpiyata’s co-designer with Butch Thunder Hawk and a working sculptor. Tager is represented by Andrea Marquit Fine Art (Boston) and is a 2009 recipient of a grant from the Artist’s Resource Trust, a fund of the Berkshire Taconic Foundation. His current work will be shown at the Anthony Greaney Gallery during spring 2010.

Wallace “Butch” Thunder Hawk, Hunkpapa Lakota artist and tribal arts instructor, United Tribes Technical College. (MA California College of Art and Crafts)

Thunder Hawk also studied tribal arts, including pipe making, with elders at Standing Rock. He has taught tribal arts at United Tribes Technical College in Bismarck, North Dakota, since the late 1970s. In 1990, he was invited with other artists to help recreate the famous Indian Hall at Thomas Jefferson’s home in Monticello, Va. Thunder Hawk is the co-designer and co-curator of Wiyohpiyata. He was also the recipient of the Peabody’s Hrdy Fellowship.

Dwayne “Chuck” Wilcox, Oglala Lakota artist.

Mr. Wilcox's drawings and paintings “ledger-style” artwork reflects a contemporary way of life rather than the past, often depicting pow-wows, people preparing for dances, families spending time together, and other everyday scenes. According to Mr. Wilcox, “I'm alive now. Our time is just as important as the past.” Dwayne Wilcox has conducted research at the Smithsonian, the Suitland Annex Archive, Carlisle Indian School through the Cumberland Historical Society on ledger art. Mr. Wilcox was raised on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. He currently resides in Rapid City, South Dakota, where he has his Dog Hat Studio (www.doghatstudio.com).

Marc Zender, Research Associate, Peabody Museum (Ph.D., University of Calgary)

Marc Zender’s research interests include anthropological and historical linguistics, comparative writing systems and decipherment (particularly Aztec and Maya writing), and Mesoamerican archaeology. He is project epigrapher for the Proyecto Arqueológico de Comalcalco, directed by Ricardo Armijo Torres, and has undertaken linguistic, epigraphic, and archaeological fieldwork in much of the Maya area, including Belize, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico. His recent publications include: “Universals and the Logic of the Material Implication: A Case Study from Maya Hieroglyphic Writing” (Research Reports on Ancient May a Writing 62, 2007, co-written with John Robertson, Stephen Houston and David Stuart) and “Fit to be Tied: Funerary Practices among the Prehispanic Maya" (In J. Guernsey and F. Kent Reilly, eds., Sacred Bundles: Ritual Acts of Wrapping and Binding in Mesoamerica, 2007, co-written with Kathryn Reese-Taylor and Debra L. Walker).