Photo by Joseph Turner Keiley, 1898 (printed 1901). From the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. Object number S/NPG.79.26 Native American (Yankton Dakota), Music, Education, Activism Zitkala-Ṡa (Red Bird / Gertrude Simmons Bonnin) (1876-1938) Zitkala-Ṡá wrote several works exploring the tensions of holding Indigenous cultural identities, while operating within a hostile, assimilationist mainstream world. Her books …
Photographer unknown. Photo credit from thehindubusinessline.com, “Scanned in Chennai R.K.Sridharan” South Asian American, Literature, Linguistics, Folklore A.K. Ramanujan (1929-1993) Dr. Attipat Krishnaswami Ramanujan, widely known as A.K. Ramanujan, was a renowned scholar whose research spanned multiple disciplines including linguistics, poetry, mythology, translation, and folklore. Born in Mysore, India, in 1929, he pursued his education in …
Photo credit Team Linya South Asian American, Journalism, Radio Liyna Anwar (1989-2020) Liyna Anwar’s short life was filled with illuminating the lives of ordinary people through storytelling. Born in Mission Viejo, California in 1989, Anwar was the child of Siddique and Sajida (Ikramuddin) Anwar, immigrant parents from India. Her experiences as a second-generation Indian Muslim …
Photo from Little Manila Rising, littlemanila.org Filipina American, History, Historic Preservation, Activism, Education Dawn Mabalon (1972-2018) Dr. Dawn Mabalon was born in 1972 in Stockton, California, the daughter and granddaughter of Filipino American farmworkers. A passionate scholar who cared deeply about Filipino American history, Dawn Mabalon’s background and love for her roots shaped both her …
Photo from lifeinlegacy.com Filipina American, Film, Activism Linda Mabalot (1953-2003) Linda Mabalot was a community documentarian and activist committed to ensuring that Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) control how they and their communities’ diverse stories are represented in visual media. A filmmaker herself, she supported the training, programming, and production of AAPI filmmakers while …
Undated portrait of John Napoleon Brinton Hewitt. (NAA INV 02858800, Photo Lot 33, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.) Native American (Tuscarora), Ethnography, Linguistics,Museum Work John Napoleon Brinton Hewitt (1859-1937) JNB Hewitt was an Indigenous anthropologist of mixed ancestry who worked for the Smithsonian Bureau of American Ethnology for 51 years, devoting his scholarship to preserving …
bell hooks at the New School, 10 October 2014. Photo by Alex Lozupone (Tduk), via Wikimedia Commons African American, Cultural Theory, Philosophy bell hooks (Gloria Jean Watkins) (1952-2021) Gloria Jean Watkins, best known by her adopted pen name, bell hooks, was one of the most respected and prolific Black woman thinkers of all time, celebrated …
Photo by Carl Fleischhauer. Dorothy Sara Lee Speaks During Presentation of Wax Cylinder Recordings. United States Nebraska Macy, 1983. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/omhbib000607/. African American, Archives, Folklore, Ethnomusicology Dorothy Sara Lee (1951-2005) Dorothy Sara Lee was an African American folklorist, ethnomusicologist, archivist, and consummate scholar and ethnographer of Native American and Fijian musics and cultures. Born in …
Self portrait. Courtesy of Wendy Makoons Geniusz Native American (Cree/Metis), Ethnobotany Mary Siisip Geniusz (1948-2016) Mary Siisip Geniusz, born in 1948, was an Oshkaabewis (ceremonial apprentice), and teaching assistant to Keewaydinoquay Peschel, an Anishinaabe medicine woman from Michigan. Geniusz’s heritage was Cree and Métis; her mother was born at the Pas in Manitoba. Because she …
Photo courtesy of Chinese American, Documentary Photography, Activism Young Kwok (Corky) Lee (1947-2021) Yan Phou Lee was a writer and editor who wrote the first book published in English by an author of Asian descent in the US. His book, When I Was a Boy in China (1887), was an autoethnography of his childhood and …