This episode features Dr. Kelly Berry, an enrolled citizen of the Apache Tribe of Oklahoma (Plains Apache) with affiliations to the Kiowa and Choctaw Nations. Dr. Berry is a Mellon Impact Post-Doctoral Fellow and Lecturer in the Department of Native American Studies at the University of Oklahoma. His groundbreaking research explores the intersections of eSports, Native American education, and technology, focusing on infusing Indigenous knowledge into classrooms and reimagining the possibilities of gaming through an Indigenous lens.

In this episode, Dr. Farina King and Dr. Davina Two Bears discuss Dr. Berry's work with him regarding Indigenizing eSports and game technologies. Dr. Berry shares his vision for education in Indigenous communities, considering how culture, technology, and education come together in innovative ways.

Dr. Berry earned a Master's of Public Health from the University of Oklahoma and then a Doctorate of Education in Educational Leadership from Kansas State University. Before his current position, Dr. Berry contributed as an Indigenous Initiatives Research Associate and curriculum advisor for Kansas State University’s Indigenous Education Leadership Certificate Graduate Program. His extensive teaching experience includes faculty appointments at Upper Iowa University, Bacone College, Cameron University, and Comanche Nation College, and he is a certified 5-12 social studies teacher in Oklahoma and Kansas.

A past fellow of Harvard University’s Management Development Program, he is also a current fellow in the University of Arizona’s Native Nations Institute Tribal Professional Governance Program and Arizona State University’s Indigenous Peoples Leadership Academy. Dr. Berry serves on the American Educational Research Association Indigenous Peoples of the Americas Special Interest Committee and is a University Council for Educational Administration Barbara L. Jackson Scholar.

Resources:

Dr. Kelly Berry, bio webpage for Esports and Co-Curriculuar Innovation at the University of Oklahoma

Berry, Kelly. "eSports in Indian Education: A Case Study." PhD diss., Kansas State University, 2024.

Berry, Kelly. "Using that Good Medicine: An Indigenous Autoethnographic Recount of Teaching and Learning with Elders during COVID." In F. King and W. Davies (Eds.) COVID-19 in Indian Country: Native American Memories and Experiences of the Pandemic (forthcoming).

NAS Mellon Impact Fellowship at University of Oklahoma website

In this episode, Dr. Blaire Morseau joins Dr. Davina Two Bears and Dr. Farina King to discuss her work with Neshnabé (Potawatomi) knowledge systems, focusing on birch bark, language, and archives. Dr. Morseau highlights the significance of Simon Pokagon's nineteenth-century birch bark books, featured in her edited volume As Sacred to Us: Simon Pokagon’s Birch Bark Stories in their Contexts. The conversation explores how traditional cultural knowledge and ecological wisdom are preserved and revitalized through these archival works.

Dr. Blaire Morseau, a citizen of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Michigan State University. Her research spans Indigenous science fiction, traditional ecological knowledge, digital heritage, and Native counter-mapping. Her forthcoming book, Mapping Neshnabé Futurity (May 2025), explores how Native environmental activism and traditional knowledge intersect with Indigenous speculative fiction to reclaim Indigenous spaces in the Great Lakes region.

Additional Resources:

Blaire Morseau (Topash-Caldwell) website

Blaire Morseau, Michigan State University directory webpage

Blaire Morseau, ed. As Sacred to Us: Simon Pokagon's Birch Bark Stories in Their Contexts (Michigan State University Press, 2023)

Here is a discount code for Morseau's book, As Sacred to Us, if purchased directly from MSU press: MSUP24

Blaire Morseau, Mapping Neshnabé Futurity: Celestial Currents of Sovereignty in Potawatomi Skies, Lands, and Waters (University of Arizona Press, 2025)

Here is the linked flyer with a discount code for Mapping Neshnabé Futurity.

Listen to recordings of tribal citizens reading Simon Pokagon's birch bark stories on the following websites:
wiwkwebthegen.com
https://wiwkwebthegen.com/digital
heritage/category/audio/field_collection/2069
This was an initiative sponsored by the Less Commonly Taught and Indigenous Languages Partnership at MSU through the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Ah-in-nist, also known as Clifford, Sipes is Cheyenne with family ties in both Oklahoma and Montana. His father was the last authorized historian of the Cheyenne People, and a respected Chief and Pipe Carrier. His Mother is a citizen of the Caddo Nation. Ah-in-nist currently resides and works in Oklahoma. He writes and speaks publicly, working most recently on the "Calling Back the Spirits" initiative to "preserve by art and the written word what was previously learned only through the oral recounting of the story of Fort Marion by the descendants" of the warriors and Indigenous people imprisoned there. Ah-in-nist is one of the descendants who supports this work with his relatives. Dr. Farina King and Dr. Davina Two Bears talk with him, in this episode, about the path that led him to this "calling back home."

Learn more with these resources:

"Calling Back the Spirits," Cassville Democrat article written by Sheila Harris (December 28, 2023)

"A look at local sculptor Lew Aytes and the Calling Back the Spirits Project," written by Adriana Keeton (November 29, 2023)

"The Native American warriors whose 'faces' are in museum storage: Robbed of their freedom on the Great Plains, imprisoned and used as models for plaster 'life masks' that forced them to breathe through tiny straws in their NOSTRILS," article written by Sheila Flynn (February 12, 2018)