Grad Student - CRNAI

Cherod Johnson

African American Studies, UC Berkeley

Michelle Katuna

Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, UC Berkeley

Michelle Katuna (Ashkenazi Jewish and non-Jewish European settler descent) is a graduate student in Environmental Science, Policy & Management. Michelle's research focuses on ongoing collaborations between Tribal nations, private landowners, and local environmental agencies and organizations to develop guidance for, and empirical evidence to support, Indigenous stewardship and co-stewardship on private lands. Tribal nations are important actors in developing place-based solutions to environmental challenges, yet their decision-making authority over ancestral lands is often compromised...

Carolyn Kraus

 Joint Medical Program,  UC Berkeley-UCSF

Andrea Lara-Garcia

Geography, UC Berkeley

I study the emergence of—and relationship between—propertied and territorial ways of relating to land, specifically in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. I am particularly interested in how non-federal actors - including - state governors, migrants, and Indigenous communities - contesr federal hegemony and assert sovereignty over the space of the border through property frameworks.

My undergraduate research at the University of Arizona examined housing inequality in Tucson’s manufactured housing communities and historically Mexican neighborhoods, especially through the mechanism of the...

Cynthia Ledesma

 Ethnic Studies, UC Berkeley

Arianna Lunow-Luke

Ethnic Studies, UC Berkeley

Arianna Lunow-Luke (she/her) is a PhD student in the department of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley, where she is the recipient of the Chancellor’s Fellowship. She is also pursuing a Graduate Certificate in Food Systems through the Berkeley Food Institute. Born and raised in Kailua, Oʻahu, Ari is a fourth generation Chinese settler of Kanaka Maoli lands in Hawaiʻi. She received her BA in Biology and Ethnic Studies from Brown University.

Ari’s research is centered on Asian settler colonialism and multiculturalism in Hawaiʻi. She is particularly...

Anna Macknick

Linguistics, UC Berkeley

Anna Macknick is a graduate student in Linguistics and the Designated Emphasis on Indigenous Language Revitalization. They collaborate with the Xaitsnoo (Southeastern Pomo) language community in creating curriculum, teaching language classes, and developing the language's first community-centered dictionary, with a focus on Traditional Ecological Knowledge. Anna's work seeks to support Indigenous language sovereignty by increasing community access to and autonomy over language materials held at UC archives. Anna is interested in connections between Universal Design for...

Kendrick Manymules

Geography, UC Berkeley

Kendrick Manymules (Diné) is a PhD candidate in the Department of Geography. He is from Fort Defiance, AZ. Kendrick's research explores the history and contemporary configuration of questions around land, development, and sovereignty. He utilizes archival methods in order to understand how contemporary understandings of land are reworked through capitalist development that invariably have profound consequences for the practice of Diné sovereignty. Kendrick holds a Bachelor of Science and Master of City Planning degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Jimena Perez

Geography, UC Berkeley

Jimena Perez is a community-engaged scholar, NSF GRFP Fellow, and Geography Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley. Her dissertation explores the L.A. River—known to the Tongva as paayme paxaayt—as a site of memory, resistance, and repair. Raised in Southeast Los Angeles, she witnessed the River’s confinement in concrete, mirroring the struggles of nearby working-class communities. Rather than centering loss, her ethnographic research highlights the visions and practices of residents across L.A. County who challenge dominant planning narratives and reimagine infrastructure. Jimena’s...