who we are

Teresa Montoya is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago. Her research and media production focuses on the legacies of environmental contamination and settler colonialism in relation to contemporary issues of tribal jurisdiction, regulatory politics, and public health in the Indigenous Southwest. In addition to her media work, she has curatorial and education experience in various institutions, including the Peabody Essex Museum, the National Museum of the American Indian, and currently the Field Museum. She is Diné and an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation.

SJ Zhang is an Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago in the department of English Language and Literature. Their current project, Going Maroon and Other Forms of Family, considers the lives of four women who went maroon in North America and the Caribbean between 1781 and 1814, with a focus on how reproduction and carceral forces shaped the decisions and the subsequent archives of each woman. Zhang’s work has been published in Representations, Women & Performance, Portable Gray, and Transition.

Makina Moses is a writer, rootworker, doctoral student, and a young filmmaker. She finds joy in riverine hills, caring for her chosen family and her plants, and also tea. Her current academic research focuses on Black Transfeminist ecologies.