Meet Our Students

Emily Charmaine Coon is Kanien’keha:ha, Wolf Clan, and her matriarchal family is from Kenhte:ke (also known as Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory). She will be carrying out her PhD in Indigenous Studies at UB, where she hopes to research Kanien’keha:ka futurities and apocalyptic land-based pedagogies in post-secondary education. 

Coon has spent the past several years as a full-time lecturer working with undergraduate students in so-called Canada. Her teaching focuses on interrupting the permanence of settler colonialism, radically re-thinking how we can present Indigenous knowledges, stories and desire in our classrooms, and dreaming about creative ways to build decolonial futures.

Coon completed her master of arts in child and youth care at the University of Victoria where she focused on her contemporary Haudenosaunee identity, the practical resurgence of sken:nen and digital ways of (re)mapping settler-occupied spaces with Indigenous knowledges.

David L. George-Shongo Jr. is a Seneca Nation archivist, historian, and cultural-preservation leader whose career centers Indigenous sovereignty, community authority over cultural heritage, and the protection of ancestral places throughout the Great Lakes and Northeast. As Director of the Seneca Nation Tribal Historic Preservation Office and former Director of the Seneca-Iroquois National Museum, he has led cultural-resource compliance, archaeological stewardship, museum development, archival governance, repatriation, and public education initiatives on behalf of the Nation. A former Seneca Nation Archivist and Tribal Archives Director, George-Shongo has been a prominent voice in Native American archival methodology and institutional accountability, including through his contributions to professional work surrounding the Protocols for Native American Archival Materials. His leadership challenges colonial narratives of Indigenous disappearance and affirms the enduring treaty rights, historical continuity, and sovereign presence of the Seneca people. Through his work with archives, collections, sacred belongings, archaeological landscapes, and community-centered interpretation, he advances the protection and transmission of Hodinöhsö:ni’ history for future generations.

Sarajane Gomlak-Green is Kanyen'kehá:ka (Six Nations of the Grand River) and was born and raised in the city of Buffalo. They received a bachelor’s degree in geology with a minor in Japanese, as well as a master’s degree in geology from the University at Buffalo. For a number of years, they worked in the field of informal STEM education, primarily at the Buffalo Museum of Science. In 2023, they completed a two-year Kanyen’ké:ha (Mohawk Language) immersion program at Onkwawén:na Kentyóhkwa at Six Nations of the Grand River. They are interested in Indigenous language revitalization, as well as Haudenosaunee languages and linguistics.

Marc Isaacs is Kanien'kehà:ka, enrolled at Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory, born in Buffalo, and raised off-territory in rural St. Lawrence County. As an actor, writer, and director, he draws on firsthand experience navigating the intersection of Native and non-Native cultures, bringing a two-worlds perspective to his storytelling. In 2025, he collaborated with actors and a language specialist from the Akwesasne community while directing a short film called The Nativist. Marc’s passion for nonfiction narratives with ties to New York State has inspired spec scripts about America’s first supermodel, pro football’s first soccer-style kicker, a former World Series record-holder and sports equipment innovator, and a B-17 radio operator whose 500 wartime letters resurfaced more than fifty years after his death—as well as an autoethnography play about the unexpected reconnection with his paternal family in Buffalo at the age of 26. As a television producer, he created an original children’s educational series in Houston, which earned multiple Lone Star Emmy nominations. In 2026, Marc returned to his alma mater, St. Lawrence University, to earn the final semester’s worth of credits to complete a Bachelor of Arts in Performance and Communication Arts, completing a journey that began 37 years before and underscoring his lifelong commitment to learning, growth, and perseverance. His daughter, Kathleen Isaacs, is also part of the University at Buffalo's campus community and in her fourth year as an undergraduate.

ABD; Dissertation working title is "Destroying Cultural Property: Rights, Responsibilities, and Repatriation"

Delaney O'Connell is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation who grew up at-large in Utah. She holds a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the University of Utah and a master’s degree in philosophy from the University at Buffalo. Her research sits at the intersections of Indigenous Studies, critical theory, political philosophy, and museum studies, with particular interests in Indigenous sovereignty, cultural property, and repatriation.

Her dissertation examines relationships between Indigenous Nations and museums through the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), asking how Indigenous understandings of property, care, and sovereignty challenge dominant museum commitments to preservation. In particular, her work considers the right to destroy cultural property as an expression of Indigenous self-determination and as a potentially protective, relational, and generative form of care.

Delaney is a Western New York Prosperity Fellow and is committed to finding ways for her scholarship and service to contribute to the communities of which she is a part. In summer 2026, she served as a Native American Fellow at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. During fall 2026, she is completing her dissertation research as a Smithsonian Institution Fellow and a University at Buffalo Humanities Institute Advanced PhD Fellow.

She plans to defend her dissertation in spring 2027 and hopes to pursue a career as a professor, continuing her research and teaching at the intersections of Indigenous Studies, philosophy, and museum studies.

Jean-Luc Pierite (Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana) serves as President of the North American Indian Center of Boston (NAICOB), Massachusetts' oldest urban Indian center. Jean-Luc also serves as the Vice President of the Carnival Society of Boston, working to preserve arts and culture of the Americas. Jean-Luc further serves as Secretary of Bvlbancha Public Access, preserving linguistic and cultural knowledge of the Gulf South through digital storytelling.

Jean-Luc has been awarded with the inaugural LaDonna Brave Bull Allard Science Activist Award at The Global Community Bio Summit which is hosted by the Community Biotechnology Initiative at the MIT Media Lab. Jean-Luc previously served as co-convener for the Institute for Collaborative Language Research (CoLang), which fosters relationships between academics and community language activists.

Jean-Luc is a Ph.D. student in Indigenous Studies at University at Buffalo - SUNY. Jean-Luc has earned a Master in Design for Emergent Futures from the Institut d'Arquitectura Avançada de Catalunya in Barcelona, Spain. Jean-Luc also earned a Bachelor of the Arts in Humanities with a co-major in Mass Communication and Japanese from Dillard University in New Orleans, Louisiana. Jean-Luc also earned an Associate of Science in Video Game Design from Full Sail University in Orlando, Florida.

Serena Posluszny is Kanien'kehá:ka, Turtle Clan (Six Nations of the Grand River) and grew up in Western New York. She obtained a double Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Philosophy from Weber State University in Utah before receiving her Master of Legal Studies in Indigenous Peoples' Law from the University of Oklahoma College of Law. Throughout her academic journey, she completed a semester abroad in South Korea attending Yonsei University and interned for a semester in Washington, D.C. with the U.S. House of Representatives. She has worked for years in the nonprofit sector as a case manager and advocate for survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking. Her dissertation research as a current Ph.D. student at the University at Buffalo concerns applying Tribal Sovereignty and Self-Determination to reframe and wield Federal Indian Law and Policy in a good way, specifically regarding the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA 1978) and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA 1990), as her work focuses on reconnecting and repatriating all of our lost relatives throughout the seven generations. 

Bernadette Scott, Onödowa'ga:' (Seneca), deer clan resides on the Seneca Nation – Cattaraugus Territory, NY,  a current Board of Trustees member at the Seneca-Iroquois National Museum (SINM), and Haudenosaunee artist/educator. She’s pursuing a PhD in Indigenous Studies while focusing on complexities of Indigenous histories, art, environmental relationships, and the significant impact of Haudenosaunee women in our society. Bernadette received a M.A. American Studies at the University at Buffalo, B.S. in Audio/Radio Production with a minor in American Indian Studies from State University of New York at Fredonia, and an A.A.S. in Travel and Tourism from Paul Smith’s College.          

For over two decades, Bernadette has been conducting Haudenosaunee cornhusk workshops and demonstrations throughout Turtle Island with various libraries, schools, colleges/universities, organizations, and groups of all ages. Innovating educational, hands-on, and engaging cornhusk workshops and demonstrations is an opportunity to engage and exchange in cultural learning is a vital component to preserving traditions for future generations. 

Alyssa Warrior grew up on Seneca Cattaraugus Territory. She began her undergraduate degree at SUNY Fredonia in physics. Her research at Fredonia included developing a program for the calibration of the campus telescope. In the summer of 2019, she attended an REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) at the University of Chicago where she worked on kinetic inductance detectors for future cosmic microwave background detection. After transferring to the University at Buffalo in 2019 she joined AISES (American Indian Science & Engineering Society) and eventually became club president during the last semester of her undergraduate studies. In the summer of 2023 she interned with NASA at the Glenn Research Center based in Cleveland Ohio. There she worked with a team furthering work in the field of hybrid electric aircrafts. Alyssa graduated with a bachelor of arts in physics in the Fall of 2023.