Keynotes

The Seeding Relations conference is honored and grateful to be joined by Ms. Elizabeth Solomon, Ms. Mary McNeil, Dr. Alaina Roberts, Dr. Cutcha Risling Baldy, and Dr. Tiya Miles in the opening and closing keynote conversations.

Opening Keynote

Friday, March 25, 10:00 am EDT

Elizabeth Solomon is an enrolled member of the Massachusett Tribe at Ponkapoag who speaks frequently about local Indigenous issues and has a long-standing commitment to human rights, diversity, inclusion, and community-building in her work. She is the Director of Administration in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health and has over three decades of public-health experience in university and community-based settings. She serves on multiple advisory and management boards, including the Massachusetts State Seal Commission. She has a Master’s degree in museum studies and works with Native communities and others underrepresented in museum exhibits and public history programs to assist with bringing their voices and stories to the forefront.

Mary McNeil is a PhD Candidate in American Studies at Harvard University and an Ann Plato Fellow at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. Her research sits at the intersections of Native American and Indigenous studies, Black studies, social history, Black and Indigenous feminisms, and geography.  Keenly invested in public-facing scholarship and collaborative research, Mary has also worked as a research assistant for the African American Trail Project at Tufts University and as a scholar-in-residence for the Framingham History Center. Mary was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky, and is an enrolled member of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe.

Closing Keynote

Saturday, March 26, 4:30 pm EDT

Alaina E. Roberts is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh. Her research focuses on the intersection of Black and Native American life from the nineteenth century to the modern day with particular attention to identity, settler colonialism, and anti-Blackness. In addition to her first book, I’ve Been Here All the While: Black Freedom on Native Land (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021) and multiple academic articles, her writing has appeared in outlets like the Washington Post, High Country News, and TIME magazine and her work has been profiled by CNN and the Boston Globe. 

Cutcha Risling Baldy is an Associate Professor and Department Chair of Native American Studies at Humboldt State University. She is the Co-Director of the NAS Food Sovereignty Lab & Cultural Workshop Space. Her book, We Are Dancing for You: Native Feminisms and the Revitalization of Women’s Coming-of-Age Ceremonies received “Best First Book in Native American and Indigenous Studies” at the 2019 Native American Indigenous Studies Association Conference. She is the volunteer Executive Director of the Native Women’s Collective, a nonprofit organization that supports the continued revitalization of Native American arts and culture. She is Hupa, Karuk, and Yurok and enrolled in the Hoopa Valley Tribe.

Tiya Miles is the author of four prize-winning histories on race, slavery, Blackness, and Indigeneity in early and nineteenth-century America, including All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake, which won the 2021 National Book Award for Nonfiction among other honors. She has published historical fiction, a lecture series on haunted plantations, and various academic articles as well as essays in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Atlantic, and more. Her work has been supported by the MacArthur Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She is currently a Professor of History and Radcliffe Alumnae Professor at Harvard University.