Alexis Bunten

Part of my agenda as a Native Alaskan scholar is to put the world of academia at the service of local communities through open, engaged scholarship. As such, I have collaborated with tribal governments, national and international organizations working to promote Indigenous cultural perpetuation, heritage and economic development throughout my professional life. After receiving a B.A. in art history from Dartmouth College, I returned to Alaska where I worked at the Sealaska Heritage Institute and the Alaska Native Heritage Center as Program Supervisor.  Subsequently, I earned a Ph.D. in anthropology from UCLA followed by appointments as a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley, and as an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Humboldt State University. Broadly speaking, my research explores Indigenous entrepreneurship as a lens to explore the shifting politics of Indigeneity in relation to policy and development. I currently hold a Ford postdoctoral fellowship at UC Santa Cruz, where I am working on a project theorizing Indigenous capitalism(s).