Anthropology alumna Emily Leischner (Ph.D, 2023) was awarded the 2023-2025 Mellon Foundation Native American Scholars Initiative Career Pathways Fellowship with the American Philosophical Society.
This two-year fellowship supports postdoctoral scholars at any stage of their careers who would like to pursue a research project and also develop or advance their professional skills in collections care and best practices surrounding Native American and Indigenous collections in archives, libraries, and museums.
Leischner is a settler and a community-based researcher who studies and works with heritage institutions like museums and archives. In reciprocity with colleagues and friends from the Nuxalk First Nation, (whose territory is on the Northwest Coast of what is also known as British Columbia, Canada), she researches the historical and contemporary appropriation of Nuxalk knowledge and heritage, collaborating on projects that reclaim and uphold Nuxalk sovereignty.
Her dissertation examines resource extraction and settler colonialism in the capture, imprisonment and return of sound recordings of Nuxalk voices in museums and archives. She’s also the co-host of Using and Refusing Museums on Nuxalk Radio.
