2007 - ATALM | Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries, & Museums

44 2007 National Conference of Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums
Program Presenters
masters in linguistics at University of Arizona. She
actively supports tribal libraries on the local and state
level and is a language advocate, serving as a teacher
of the Mohave language.
Robert Frankel has been Director of Museums and
Visual Arts since August 2002. A museum professional
with over thirty years of experience, Robert began his
career in the Education Department of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art in New York. He subsequently
served as assistant director of the Phoenix Art Museum
and as director of the Delaware Art Museum, the
Center for the Fine Arts at Miami, Florida, the Chrysler
Museum at Norfolk, Virginia and the Santa Barbara
Museum of Art. In 1990–91 and 2000–01, Frankel was
part of the task force to revise Professional Practices in
Art Museums. He has been a reader for the Institute of
Museum and Library Services and served as a panelist
for the National Endowment for the Arts.
Alison Freese has worked to help develop library and
information services in Native American communities
for the past 10 years. Before coming to the Institute
of Museum and Library Services, she worked as the
tribal libraries consultant for the New Mexico State
Library in Santa Fe and as information specialist at the
University of New Mexico Native American Studies
Resource Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
David George-Shongo, Jr., is a resident of Allegany
Indian Territory. He graduated from St. Lawrence University
with a BA in Anthropology. During college he
participated in several internships with the Seneca
Iroquois National Museum. For one of these internships,
he wrote letters to museums about what items
in their collection needed to be repatriated under
NAGPRA. He has worked as an adjunct professor at
Jamestown Community College teaching physical
anthropology and also for the Seneca Nation of Indians
Tribal Historical Preservation Office. Three years ago
he became the first archivist for the Seneca Nation. He
became the first chairperson of the Society of American
Archivist’s Native American Archives Roundtable
in 2005 and was unanimously re-elected chair of the
Roundtable in 2006. He is the former chairperson of
the Seneca Nation Library Board of Trustees.
Kevin Gover is a member of the Pawnee Tribe of
Oklahoma. After graduating from Princeton, where he
majored in Public and International Affairs, Professor
Gover attended the University of New Mexico School
of Law, where he graduated cum laude. He clerked for
United States District Judge Juan G. Burciaga. Private
practice followed with a large firm in Washington, DC.
In 1986, Professor Gover formed a firm in New Mexico
with two other highly regarded tribal attorneys. The
firm grew into one of the largest Indian owned law
firms in the country. In 1997, Professor Gover was
selected by President Clinton to serve as Assistant
Secretary of the Interior for Indian Affairs under Interior
Secretary and former Arizona Governor, Bruce
Babbitt. Serving as Assistant Secretary until January
2001, Gover concentrated on upgrading Indian law
enforcement, rebuilding decrepit Indian schools,
reforming trust services and overhauling the Bureau
of Indian Affairs’ management systems. His reform
efforts, coupled with an eloquent apology to the nation’s
Indian communities for the history of wrongs
done to them by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, won
him wide approval in Indian country and Congressional
praise. Professor Gover comes to the College
of Law from Steptoe & Johnson, a national law firm
with offices in Washington, DC and Phoenix, where he
headed the Indian Practice Group. He also serves as a
Judge for the Tonto Apache Tribal Court of Appeals,
and the San Carlos Apache Tribal Court of Appeals
and on the governing boards of several non-profit
educational institutions.
Victoria Graves, a member of the Osage Nation,
holds a BA in Sociology and a BA in Native American
Studies. She currently attends the University of
Missouri–St. Louis Masters Graduate Program in History
and Museum Studies and expects to graduate
in 2008.
Mary Anne Hansen has co-coordinated Montana
State University’s annual Tribal College Librarians
Professional Development Institute since 1997. She is
an associate professor and reference librarian at MSU,
also serving as library distance education coordinator.
She earned her MLS through the University of
Arizona’s distance education program and also has
an MEd in Adult and Higher Education and a BA in
Modern Languages from MSU.
Benjamin Harjo, Jr., Seminole-Absentee Shawnee,
is considered one of the nation’s leading Native
American artists. His formal education includes two
years at Santa Fe’s Institute of American Indian Art
and a BFA conferred by Oklahoma State University.
During a career spanning over thirty years, Harjo has
garnered numerous honors and awards including the
2003 Honored One at the Red Earth Festival, the 2002
Best of Division—New Directions, Painting Santa Fe
Indian Market, 2002 Distinguished Alumni Award from
Oklahoma State University, and 2001 Best of Division -
Painting from the Heard Museum Guild Indian Art Fair
and Market. Recent one-man museum shows include
“The Earth, The Moon, The Stars Above” at the Wheel-