Session III: Leadership

Shana Bushyhead Condill (Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians) has worked in the museum and cultural field for over twenty years. In her current role as executive director of the Museum of the Cherokee Indian (MCI) in Cherokee, North Carolina, Condill furthers a career-spanning commitment to cultivating Native representation and self-representation in public spaces, advocating for the intentional combining of mainstream and Native best practices in cultural preservation.

Brandie Macdonald (Chickasaw Nation with ancestral ties to the Choctaw Nation) serves as the Executive Director of Indiana University’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Her 14-year tenure working in non-profit organizations is based around decolonial capacity building through transformative practice, community consultations, education, and fostering creative cultural-capital. Macdonald is enrolled in an Education Studies PhD program at University of California, San Diego. She holds a MEd in International Higher Education from Loyola University, Chicago, and a BA in Applied Anthropology from University of North Carolina, Charlotte. Her honors include a Salzburg Global Seminar Fellowship, an American Alliance of Museums’ Nancy Hanks Award for Professional Excellence, and a Smithsonian Affiliate Fellowship. She currently serves as secretary on the board of the International Council of Museums’ Committee on Collecting (ICOM-COMCOL) i and with the Museum Education Roundtable.

Melissa Melero-Moose (Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe) is a mixed-media painter with ties to the Fort Bidwell Paiute and Modoc tribes. She is the founder and curator of the art collective Great Basin Native Artists. After attending the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, Melero-Moose received artist fellowships and grants from the Joan Mitchell Foundation, Nevada Museum of Art, School for Advanced Research, Southwestern Association for Indian Arts (SWAIA), Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, and Institute of American Indian Arts.

Elizabeth A. Woody (Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, Oregon) is a Yakama Nation descendent and born for the Tódích'íinii (Bitter Water clan) of the Navajo Nation. Her paternal grandfather’s clan is Mą'ii deeshgiizhinii (Coyote Pass-Jemez clan). Woody is the executive director of the Museum at Warm Springs. She served as the governor-appointed State of Oregon Poet Laureate (2016-2018). She holds a Master of Public Administration degree from the Executive Leadership Institute (ELI), Mark O. Hatfield School of Government of Portland State University. Woody also earned a BA in humanities from The Evergreen State College and studied creative writing and two-dimensional arts at the Institute of American Indian Arts. She received the American Book Award (1990), the William Stafford Memorial Award for Poetry, and was a finalist for the Oregon Book Awards (1995). Woody is included in Notable Native Americans (Gale Research), The Biographical Directory of Native American Painters (University of Oklahoma Press), St. James Guide to Native North American Artists (Gale Research), and online biographical directories, such as the Poetry Foundation.