Doctor of Healthcare Administration (D.H.A.), Franklin University, 2024, Health Programs

The United States pediatric population is unique in that the epidemiological trends differ from those seen in the adult population. When discussing the pediatric emergency department (ED), this is typically a setting with high patient flow which requires swift diagnoses and treatment. Ideally, all patients should have equal opportunity to receive their highest possible level of quality healthcare, regardless of social determinants of health (SDOH) such as patient race/ethnic background, preferred spoken language, socioeconomic status, and insurance status. This is essentially the concept of health equity. The goal is to provide responsible and ethical healthcare to patients. If healthcare delivery is disproportionate, this may result in the overcrowding of EDs, delays in patient care, economic burden on the healthcare system, and increased morbidity and mortality. Some scholars have claimed that both individual and systemic biases have resulted in inequitable healthcare delivery. The following research study investigated health equity in the United States pediatric ED via the following question: What government and organizational policy changes can be made to enhance ED pediatric patient equity by utilizing first-hand information from ED physicians? The selected methodology for this research was qualitative and utilized in-depth semi-structured interviews of 15 pediatric ED physicians via Franklin University's Zoom platform. ATLAS.ti software was used to assist in identifying key themes and sub-themes from the code transcriptions.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2024, Anthropology

American Indian communities were among the most heavily impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Even as many begin to treat COVID-19 as an endemic pathogen, Native peoples continue to navigate its far-reaching impacts as the most immediate affront to their physical and cultural lives in a long line of historical and contemporary abuses. To understand response to crises such as the pandemic, anthropologists often rely on the concept of resilience. However, despite a history of its theorization in anthropology and related social sciences, its usefulness as a concept remains hindered by assumptions encouraging overgeneralized and deterministic applications. As some scholars have noted, culturally-specific notions of resilience may clarify the concept while increasing its usefulness among marginalized communities. In response to calls from Native community members, this project sought to understand how resilience was conceptualized among Native peoples in the wake of the pandemic and how this impacted their abilities to move forward. Within a community-based participatory research framework, I conducted an ethnographic project facilitating community conversations, follow-up interviews, and community-led working groups in ten communities across Native America. Participating communities represented both reservation and urban, off-reservation communities in the Great Plains, Great Lakes, and Southeastern regions of the United States. Participants were asked to engage in a community conversation to discuss their pandemic experiences alongside their visions for their communities' futures with an option to participate in additional follow-up interviews. Further, interested participants organized community-led working groups to address their post-pandemic concerns. The findings from this project suggest that resilience in these communities was not simply a passive ability to weather upheaval. Rather, it represents an iterative process that involves considering responses historicall (open full item for complete abstract)

Psy. D., Antioch University, 2024, Antioch Seattle: Clinical Psychology

The legacy of colonialism has created a modern-day reality where Indigenous populations of the United States (US) experience mental, physical, and emotional distress at disproportionately higher rates than other cultural groups in the country. Increased distress translates to an increased need for supportive services. Because the field of Western Psychology is based in colonialistic EuroWestern worldviews which positions that worldview as superior, Indigenous clients and communities have often experienced further harm in their encounters with mental health services. In recent decades, there has been increasing attention to adapting research, training, academic and clinical work in ways that are culturally appropriate for diverse populations. Native American/Alaska Native groups are rarely accounted for in these efforts and cultural adaptation in general does not go far enough to account for culturally grounded worldviews and psychologies. Native American/Alaska Native therapists bring a unique and valuable insider point of view to formulation and application of culturally appropriate services for Indigenous clients that is grounded in Indigenous Psychology. Employing a Critical Constructivist Grounded Theory approach, semi-structured interviews were conducting with seven Indigenous clinicians who provide services and advocate for Native American/Alaska Native communities. They generously provided insight into the challenges of working within a EuroWestern based system of mental health and specific ways their expertise informs adaptation of their services. They v shared the ways they adapt their work with Indigenous clients and communities, providing protective and advocacy functions within all facets of the Western mental health field and society in general. This research conceptualizes their work as a method for restoring relationships and connections with Indigeneity, which have been disrupted by historical and ongoing genocide, discrimination, and marginalizati (open full item for complete abstract)

Undergraduate Honors Program, Malone University, 2024, Honors Thesis

This research delves into an intricate exploration of the impact of colonization on the patriarchal values within the culture of the Haudenosaunee people, a prominent Indigenous confederacy in North America. Through meticulous historical analysis, this study unravels the complex interplay of external influences on the traditionally matrilineal societal structures of the Haudenosaunee through the transformation of gender dynamics, identifying the mechanisms and factors contributing to the erosion of their traditional values. By employing a sociological framework of feminist theory and cultural hybridization, the research seeks to illuminate the process of colonial assimilation in terms of gender roles. It argues that the necessity to survive resulted in indigenous forced assimilation into the colonial man's cultural values thus leading to the reanalyzing of Native societal structures. The changes in societal structures would gradually move Haudenosaunee cultural norms from a complimentary-based to a patriarchal foundation through capitalistic colonial values. Those contributing values aided the move of assimilation, such as the concept of land ownership and the societal change in currency, Jesuit missionary attempts at conversion, and the misconceptions of either group's views of one another.

Ph.D., Antioch University, 2023, Antioch New England: Environmental Studies

We know that when children feel a sense-of-relation within local natural environments, they are more prone to feel concern for them, while nurturing well-being and resilience in themselves and in lands/waters they inhabit. Positive environmental behaviors often follow into adulthood. Our human capacities for creating sustainable solutions in response to growing repercussions of global warming and climate change may grow if more children feel a sense of belonging in the wild natural world. As educators, if we listen to and learn from students' voices about how they engage in nature, we can create pedagogical experiences directly relevant to their lives. Activities that relate to learners' lives inspire motivation, curiosity, and furthers understanding. Behaviors supporting environmental stewardship, environmental justice, and participation in citizen science and phenology are more probable when children feel concern for ecological landscapes. Internationally, some educators are free to encourage a sense-of -relation by bringing students into natural places. Yet, there are many educators who are constrained from doing so by strict local, state, and national education policies and accountability measures. Overcoming restrictions requires creative, relevant, and enjoyable learner-centered opportunities. Research shows that virtual nature experiences can provide for beneficial connections with(in) nature for children and adults. It is best to bring children outside. When this is not possible, a sense of wonder may be encouraged in the classroom. Our exploratory collaborative digital landscape-lore project makes this possible. We expand awareness about how we, educators, and children alike, are engaged within the landscapes and waterscapes significant to us. The term landscape-lore articulates the primacy of the places we find meaningful. Our intercultural investigations took place in collaborative public schools in colonized landscapes. New Hampshire and New Zealand, k (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2023, Cross-Cultural, International Education

The Maumee Mission School for the Ottawa Indians operated from 1823-1834 in Maumee, Ohio. This was a significant time period in Northwest Ohio being after the War of 1812 and before the Indian Removal Act of 1830. Due to the War of 1812, the Second Great Awakening, the Great Migration of the 1800s of white settlers into Ohio, and the complicated relationship between the Native Americans and the white settlers, the Maumee Mission school functioned as a post-conflict school with the goal of assimilating Ottawa students into a Christian Euro-American society. The chapters provide evidence for this claim as well as give more detail on how and why the Maumee Mission School functioned in this regard. Chapter I explains how the school indirectly taught the Ottawa and other Native American students who had the power in the new American society. Chapter II focuses on the people at the Maumee Mission school. The school was a multi-ethnic school boasting students from several different tribes and backgrounds. Chapter III describes which traits were expected of a “civilized” person. Chapter IV discusses the opinions about the Maumee Mission School's success. The Maumee Mission School adds to the historical perspective of Native American schooling by demonstrating the similarities and differences between the Maumee school and boarding schools that operated after the Removal Act of 1830, highlighting a pivotal period in the relations between the federal government and Indian nations. It also examines the culture of Northwest Ohio in the 1820s and 1830s, adds to the complex history of missionary work, and illustrates the American Indian education policy: assimilation. The Maumee Mission operated as a post-conflict school with nationalistic beliefs driving the purpose to assimilate the students into Christian Euro-American culture and bring peace to the area.

Master of Arts, Case Western Reserve University, 2023, History

During the twentieth-century trachoma, an infectious eye disease, was prevalent among Native Americans. Historians have analyzed the Southwest Trachoma Campaign of 1924-27 but have overlooked a parallel campaign conducted by the Office of Indian Affairs (OIA) and ophthalmologist Dr. L. Webster Fox. The Northwest Trachoma Campaign of 1923-27 centered on the Blackfeet reservation in Montana and eventually expanded to other reservations in the state. Both campaigns used surgical treatments that have been criticized by modern scholars. This thesis argues that these surgeries aligned with contemporary medical practices. The Northwest campaign built upon the Blackfeet Agency's prior trachoma efforts and benefited from the relationship between the Agency and Dr. Fox. Though it did not eradicate trachoma, the campaign restored eyesight and prevented widespread blindness. The Northwest campaign is a rare example of the federal government providing Native American patients with beneficial and effective healthcare in the early twentieth century.

Bachelor of Arts (BA), Ohio University, 2023, Art History

This thesis and body of work examines the experiences and collective histories of Appalachians and clay. It analyzes and responds to readings about the history of the material starting with the geological formation of clay, and moving through stories of the civilizations that have inhabited this region. Because of its history of glaciation, the Ohio Valley has an abundance of clay. For this reason, it is also one of the earliest places in the archeological record that we see pottery in North America. The use of clay in this region continued after Anglo-Americans settled on the land, with industrial uses of clay expanding and eventually leading to fine art potteries taking root in southern and central Ohio. In this body of work, I continue this collective experience in clay by engaging with my personal history in Appalachia and telling the story of how I have come to make sense of the world around me.

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2023, Germanic Languages and Literatures

In this paper, I argue that the two DEFA-Indianerfilme, Todlicher Irrtum (1969) and Blauvogel (1979), raise questions of Indian-settler coexistence. Through topographically driven analyses of the films that also pay special attention to their racially-mixed and culturally-mixed protagonists, I demonstrate how Todlicher Irrtum suggests that Indian survival hinges on the success of a coexistence founded on enlightenment ideals, and how Blauvogel simultaneously problematizes coexistences under settler colonial and Indian societies, championing instead a third way. My readings of these films are preceded with an introduction to the DEFA-Indianerfilme, briefly touching upon the genre's literary and cinematic roots, and capped by a conclusion suggesting the relevance of these films as didactic guides for contemporary questions of coexistence.

Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 2023, Human Ecology: Human Development and Family Science

Objective: This study examined the experiences of tribal reunification for American Indian relatives who were fostered and/or adopted as children. Background: Reunification is most often studied as a binary outcome in child welfare. Little research examines how reunification happens and no studies to date have explored the tribal reunification of American Indian fostered and/or adopted relatives. Method: A secondary-data analysis was conducted on 70 participants' open-ended responses to three questions from the Experiences of Adopted and Fostered Individuals Project collected in 2012 through 2013. Participants' responses about tribal reunification were analyzed using inductive thematic analysis. The data was independently reviewed by research team members and organized into prospective codes, then the team came together to create a preliminary thematic map that organized the codes into larger themes. Ultimately, the team refined the thematic map to best capture emerging themes in the data. Results: Five themes emerged from the data analysis including: (1) type of contact, (2) contact with whom in tribal reunification, (3) reaction to tribal reunification, (4) healing, and (5) barriers to tribal reunification. American Indian relatives initiated tribal reunification following tribal contact through the internet and social media, mail and phone, search and records, tribal lands, talking circles and pow wows. Fostered/adopted relatives reunified with a variety of people in tribe such as family members, relatives and tribe members, and American Indian people more broadly. American Indian relatives experienced varied reactions to reunification including excitement happiness and relief, anger and numbness, and sadness and mourning. Participants identified healing through belonging and resemblance, place identity, and being called home. Finally, American Indian relatives experiencing barriers to reunification identified desires for reunification or being in process and (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2023, History of Art

Mixtitlan Ayauhtitlan (in the Clouds, in the Mist): The Invisible in Early Modern Nahua Art, addresses the visual strategies adopted by central Mexican tlahcuilohqueh (artists) to depict unseen forces that transcend sensorial and ontological categories. Redefining these classifications with a culturally contextualized interpretation highlights themes of interrelation and metonymy. These essays draw on an interdisciplinary range of art historical, linguistic, and ethnographic methodologies to understand Nahua modes of representation, discourse, and knowledge generation. The project begins with an analysis of invisible emanations that appear in the Borgia Group, a set of five stylistically linked divinatory almanacs that survived the purges of Mesoamerican books in the early colonial period. Establishing a visual grammar for how Nahua artists depicted these multisensory emanations, the following chapter considers how those strategies shifted in the first fifty years of Spanish domination of Mexico. Textual evidence for the agency of invisible emanations perceived as sound or smell contrasts with an absence of these forces in visual depictions of the same events in the sixteenth-century. The third chapter analyzes a single image that appears as a pair of speech scrolls. Associated in the colonial period primarily with tlahcuilolli, and typically translated as “writing,” it is better defined as a “marked surface” like that of a pictographic Mesoamerican codex. However, when the same image appears in representations of the sky, on garments, or as units of time, it reveals a set of metonymic associations that are reflected in Nahuatl rhetoric. The final chapter discusses how unseen agency also takes physical forms as supernatural anthropomorphic beings rendered visually as descending from the sky. This historical research is complemented with oral history work in contemporary Nahuatl-speaking communities of Mexico where unseen forces continue to affect people and disrupt (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Science, Miami University, 2023, Computer Science and Software Engineering

It is a well-established fact that the performance of Machine Translation (MT) techniques largely depends on the quantity and quality of data available. The lack of a large well-curated dataset is especially a challenge for low-resource languages. The Myaamia language, also known as the Miami-Illinois language, is an endangered Native American language, and there are active efforts being made toward its revitalization. As a part of the revitalization process, the recorded texts are currently being manually translated, which might take up to a decade to translate at the current rate, according to some expert assessments. To speed up the translation process, we developed Myaamia Translator, a Neural Machine Translation (NMT) based machine translation approach, which leverages the state-of-the-art transformer architecture to translate text from Myaamia to English. The contributions of this work are two-fold: first, we use a combination of rule-based augmentation and back-translation augmentation to address the data limitation; and second, we train the model using the large dataset to test its effectiveness in translating a religious Myaamia textbook to English.

Master of Science (MS), Bowling Green State University, 1950, History

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 1997, American Culture Studies

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2022, Art History (Fine Arts)

The Sea Ranch is an architecturally significant resort community on the north coast in California's Bay Area, with a master plan and aesthetic that is renowned for its treatment of the local site conditions and rural built environment. This study seeks to demonstrate that the Sea Ranch can be understood through the lens of settler colonialism in the United States not in spite of its ecological and site-specific credo, but indeed precisely because of it. In untangling the relationship between architecture, landscape, and vernacularity at the Sea Ranch, so too does the relationship between its visual and cultural antecedents begin to unravel the myth of the place. In reading the Sea Ranch's environmental and aesthetic citations through the experiences, histories, and means of survival of the land's original stewards, the Kashaya Pomo, the settler colonial framework undergirding the project complicates the ways in which the Sea Ranch's utopian beginnings were conceived of and are recounted in architectural history.

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 1992, American Culture Studies

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 1992, American Culture Studies

Doctor of Education , University of Dayton, 2022, Educational Leadership

The Missing Murdered Indigenous Women Coalition of North Carolina (MMIW NC) has examined the relationships among local, state, county, tribal, and federal supportive and responsive systems, gaps in services, and barriers to care in North Carolina that contribute to violence against American Indian women, girls, and two-spirit. There are gaps in coverage due to databases not having racial categories for American Indian women to select what race they belong to, jurisdictional battles that occur when reservation residents are discovered or reported missing elsewhere, tribes' inability to exercise sovereignty and prosecute violent crimes such as rape. The MMIW NC Coalition is dedicated to creating a statewide initiative to convince the North Carolina General Assembly, North Carolina Department of Public Safety, North Carolina Attorney General's Office, governor of North Carolina, and Commission of Indian Affairs provides a database for the monitoring or public reporting of missing and murdered Indigenous women and create a task response responsible for gathering the data. Currently, no comprehensive, accessible, cross-jurisdictional database exists to record missing American Indian women in North Carolina.

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2022, Educational Studies

This constructivist narrative inquiry thesis focuses on the stories Native American student-athletes share about their college choice, academic, and athletic experiences. I review existing literature on Native American student athletes' persistence and retention as well as college choice and environmental themes that support Native students and student-athletes. I then share my research design, including methodology, methods for story collection, and proposed methods for narrative analysis. The most common association by non-Native collegians between the phrases "Native American" and "college athletics" is any number of offensive college mascots. Rarely do non-Native people think of Native American student-athletes or consider what it means to be Native and a college student competing in intercollegiate athletics. Using narrative inquiry and Tribal Critical Race Theory as a theoretical framework, I elevate the throughlines within the Native American student-athlete collegiate experience and suggest best practices for both —Higher Education Administration and Athletics—by listening to and understanding Native American student-athletes' experiences in choosing a college/university and their athletic and academic experiences while attending an NCAA Division institution. The findings of this study indicate Native American student-athletes are unfamiliar with the athletic recruiting process and Native American campus resources have a positive influence on the Native American student-athlete experience. Recommendations are provided.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2022, English

In this dissertation, I analyze the engagement and framing of Indigenous, traditional knowledges in climate science initiatives. In particular, I focus on Western expectations around knowledge definitions and the sharing of knowledge as well as how traditional knowledges are, or are not, framed as expert. When Western institutions frame traditional knowledges as non-expert or less rigorous forms of knowledge production, Western institutions foster a stance toward traditional knowledges that is incommensurable with the material realities of Indigenous communities. Western institutions like universities value established forms of knowledge production like the scientific method to the degree that such forms of knowledge production are often deemed both necessary and universal for knowledge to be recognized as relevant and applicable. While nonindigenous researchers in areas like biodiversity and renewable energy show an increasing interest in traditional knowledges, many Indigenous communities have begun to protect and regulate their systems of knowledge through mechanisms like research ordinances and agreements. Indigenous communities' moves to protect their knowledges often stem from historical and contemporary instances of Western knowledge theft and appropriation which in turn stems from the devaluation of traditional knowledge. That is, traditional knowledges are often valued only as commodities, not as rigorous systems of knowledge. I argue that engagement with traditional knowledges is essential in the ongoing efforts to address complex systems problems like climate change and biodiversity loss, but such engagements require Western institutions to acknowledge their ongoing colonial practices and let go of their often rigid constraints on knowledge sharing and production: a move I frame as rhetorical emptiness.