Dr. Brittani R. Orona (Hupa, Hoopa Valley Tribe) is currently a UC President's and Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of History at UC Santa Cruz. Prior to joining UCSC, she was an Assistant Professor of American Indian Studies at San Diego State University. Orona's research and teaching focus on California Indian history and human rights, Indigenous science and technology studies, environmental studies, public humanities, and visual sovereignty. Orona earned her Ph.D. in Native American Studies with a Designated Emphasis in Human Rights from University of California, Davis, an M.A. in Native American Studies from UC Davis, an M.A. in Public History from Sacramento State University, and her B.A. in History from Cal Poly Humboldt. She currently serves on the University of California Systemwide Repatriation Committee as a Voting Member. She previously served as Board Secretary for Save California Salmon, Board Member at Large for the California Association of Museums (CAM), and a Board Member at Large/Board Secretary for Preservation Sacramento. Her dissertation to manuscript project focuses on Indigenous environmental justice, visual sovereignty, and water rights on the Klamath River Basin in Northwestern California. The project addresses how environmental policy on the Klamath River Basin relies on narrow definitions of genocide, time, and settler-colonial concepts of ownership to continue Indigenous land dispossession in California. Hupa, Yurok, and Karuk artists and activists work beyond the scope of environmental policy to assert place-based epistemology through trans-Indigenous relationships against the state. She received support and funding for her research from the UC President's Postdoctoral Fellowship program, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, American Council for Learned Societies, Mellon Public Scholars Program, Robert and Patricia Switzer Foundation, and Incomindios, an international Indigenous rights organization. She has published in News from Native California, Humboldt Journal of Social Relations, KCET, Northwest Coast Regalia Stories Project, California History Journal (UC Press) with book chapters from the University of Utah Press and University of Arizona Press. Orona is a member of Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA), California Indian Studies and Scholars Association (CISSA), Western History Association (WHA), American Historical Association (AHA), Organization of American Historians (OAH), and Native Women’s Collective. She previously held the 2021-2022 Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion, 2020 Incomindios-Lippuner Indigenous Human Rights, and the 2019-2020 Switzer Foundation Environmental fellowships. Prior to joining academia, Orona worked for several federal, local, and state government agencies including: California State Parks, California Department of Toxic Substances Control, California Government Operations Agency, California State Indian Museum, the California State Office of Historic Preservation, California State Archives, National Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC, and the Maidu Museum and Historic Site. |
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