Meet Our Staff

Dr. Winona Wynn is an enrolled member of the Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes of the Fort Peck Reservation and a full professor of Humanities and Social Sciences at Heritage University. Her teaching and scholarship bring together Indigenous literature, Indigenous psychology, storytelling, and community research. For more than two decades, she has helped students explore how history and culture shape identity while making space for the knowledge and experiences they bring to the classroom.

Through her consulting work with the University of Idaho, Wynn developed curriculum for Tribal schools titled Teaching in a Community Context. She also worked alongside Yakama Nation programs on projects involving cultural knowledge, environmental sustainability, intergenerational storytelling, and community wellness.

Her academic leadership includes a National Endowment for the Humanities curriculum project and three consecutive Gates Foundation grants. She introduced Talking Circles to the annual regional conferences of the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship’s western cohort, a practice that continued for more than a decade. As Heritage University’s Institutional and Summer Coordinator for The Leadership Alliance, she builds relationships among students, mentors, and research institutions to support students’ paths toward graduate study.

As a writer and playwright, Wynn explores whose stories are told and how they are carried forward. She wrote scripts portraying Sacagawea and Wilma Mankiller for We Continue, Core Ensemble’s nationally touring chamber music theater production. Across her teaching, community work, and creative projects, storytelling is central to her commitment to Indigenous peoples, relationships, and well-being.

Selected Work

2026 —      Peacemaking Circle Facilitator. Co-led Talking Circles addressing Indigenous/Native American and Black/African American experiences, Linguistic Society of America Annual Meeting, New Orleans, Louisiana, January 8–11.

2025 —      Peacemaking Circle Facilitator, Linguistic Society of America Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, January 9–12.

2024 —      Sacred Legacies: Honoring Cultural Warriors through Art and Education. Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums International Conference, Palm Springs, California, November 13.

2023 —      Playwright, We Continue, Core Ensemble Chamber Music Theater’s nationally touring production. Conceived, developed, and wrote scripts portraying Sacagawea and Wilma Mankiller; the production received support from the National Endowment for the Arts.

2023 —      The Existential Cry for Indianness: An Archeology of Personhood on the Rez. Presentation, American Studies Association Annual Meeting, Montreal, Quebec, November 2–5.

2023 —      Book review of The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History by Ned Blackhawk. Nevada Historical Society Quarterly.

2020 —      The Dilemma of Visibility in the Virtual Classroom: To See or Not to See? Oh, the          Humanities! The Third Chapter Project.

2020 —      Contributor, “How the Humanities Help Us through Crises.” Spark, Humanities Washington.    Reflection on Indigenous storytelling and survival during times of crisis.

2015 —      Indigenous Ways of Knowing. Native American Heritage Month keynote, California Institute of Technology.