Blaire Topash-Caldwell

portrait of a smiling woman with long, straight, black hair. she is wearing a gray shirt and striped blue and white cardigan with a shell necklace

PRE-DOCTORAL FELLOW – American Indian & Indigenous Studies

Blaire Topash-Caldwell, Pre-Doctoral Fellow, American Indian and Indigenous Studies, is an enrolled citizen of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians with research interests in Indigenous science fiction, museum studies, anthropology of place and space, environment and ecology, anthropology of knowledge production, digital heritage, geographic information systems, and tribal historic preservation. She received her M.A. from the University of New Mexico Department of Anthropology and is working on completing her Ph.D., also at the University of New Mexico. Her dissertation titled, “Neshnabé Futurisms: Indigenous Science and Eco-Politics in the Great Lakes” investigates how Native American communities reclaim space and place through ecological revitalization and counter-mapping projects as well as leverage themselves politically through ceremonially-informed Women’s water walks in the context of environmental degradation and climate change in the Great Lakes region. Blaire is also active in her tribe where she serves as the Archivist for the Pokagon Band Department of Language and Culture as well as on the Tribal Art Committee and the Kee-boon-mein-kaa Pow Wow Committee.