Elizabeth Sumida Huaman

Background & Expertise

Elizabeth Sumida Huaman (Wanka/Quechua) is professor and Endowed Chair of the Department of American Indian Studies in the College of Liberal Arts and professor in the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. She studies the relationship between Indigenous lands, cultural practices, and in and out-of-school education with Indigenous communities and Tribal institutions in the Americas. Centering Indigenous Knowledge Systems, her work examines several themes—first, the interfaces between modernity, development and Indigenous places; second, Indigenous place-based learning via community-based educational design and land-based pedagogies; and third, Indigenous local and global frameworks and enactments of human and earth rights. Her most recent research and education projects include, 1) Indigenous land stewardship and global environmental shift in Peru and Ecuador; 2) Post-conflict Andean earth and human rights and reciprocities and family- and community-based education; 3) American Indian scientists, Tribal Colleges and Universities, and STEM learning for Indigenous self-determination; 4) The histories and futures of small Indigenous schools across the Americas; and 5) Labor, violence, nature, and life aspirations among Quechua and Indigenous women. Her books include “Indigenous research design: Transnational perspectives in practice” and “Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Research Methodologies” (both with Nathan D. Martin, Canadian Scholars’ Press). She is the lead editor of the SAGE Encyclopedia of Indigenous Education project, co-editor of AERA Open, and her research has been featured in AlterNative, Anthropology & Education Quarterly, Cultural Studies of Science Education and the Journal of American Indian Education.