‘siyo ginali. I’m an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation, born and raised in Colorado. (See Statement of Indigenous Citizenship and Affiliation below.) Professionally, I work on unceded xʷməθkʷəy̓əm territory as Full Professor and Distinguished University Scholar in the Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies and Department of English Languages and Literatures at UBC. I received my B.A. from the University of Northern Colorado and M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Before coming to UBC in 2012, I spent ten years as a faculty member in the Department of English at the University of Toronto in Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe territory, where I was also an affiliate of the Aboriginal Studies Program.

My work in Indigenous cultural and literary studies takes up questions and issues of nationhood, kinship, and belonging, with increasing attention to the intersections between Indigenous literatures, speculative fiction, and other-than-human peoples. More information about my work can be found on my website.

Current Research and Writing

Current and forthcoming projects include the twentieth anniversary “Citizenship and Sovereignty” edition of Our Fire Survives the Storm focusing on Cherokee citizen writers, a book-length cultural history of the “Cherokee Princess” phenomenon, and a young-adult fantasy novel.

 Areas of specialization

• Cherokee studies
• Indigenous cultural and literary studies
• Animal studies
• Speculative fiction/Indigenous wonderworks

Authored Books

• Raccoon. Animal Series, ed. Jonathan Burt. London: Reaktion, 2021. 224 pp.
• Why Indigenous Literatures Matter. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2018. 284 pp.
• Our Fire Survives the Storm: A Cherokee Literary History. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2006. 277 pp.
• Badger. Animal Series, ed. Jonathan Burt. London: Reaktion, 2015. 224 pp.
• The Way of Thorn and Thunder: The Kynship Chronicles. Fully revised, one-volume omnibus edition of The Way of Thorn and Thunder trilogy. Albuquerque: U of New Mexico P, 2011. 616 pp.

Selected Co-Edited Books

• Allotment Stories: Indigenous Land Relations Under Settler Siege. Co-edited with Jean M. O’Brien. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2022. 376 pp.
• The Oxford Handbook of Indigenous American Literature. Co-edited with James H. Cox. New York: Oxford UP, 2014. 741 pp.

Selected Journal Articles, Book Chapters, and Short Stories

• “Hack the Orcs, Loot the Tomb, and Take the Land: Settler Colonialism, Indigeneity, and Otherwise Futures of Dungeons and Dragons.” Fifty Years of Dungeons & Dragons. Eds. Premeet Sidhu, Marcus Carter, and Jose Zagal. MIT Press, May 2024: 259-273.
• “R is for Raccoon.” Animalia: An Anti-Imperial Bestiary for Our  Eds. Antoinette Burton and Renisa Mawani. Duke UP, 2020. 153-161.
• “Tatterborn.” Read, Listen, Tell: Indigenous Stories from Turtle Island. Eds. Sophie McCall, Deanna Reder, and David Gaertner, Wildrid Laurier UP, 2017. 327-336.
• “The Boys Who Became the Hummingbirds.” Love Beyond Body, Space, and Time: An Indigenous LGBT Sci-Fi Anthology. Ed. Hope Nicholson. Toronto: Bedside Press, 2016. 54-59.
• “Reflections on Indigenous Literary Nationalism: On Home Grounds, Singing Hogs, and Cranky Critics.” Sources and Methods in Indigenous Studies. Eds. Jean O’Brien and Chris Andersen. Routledge, 2016. 23-30.
• “Indigenous Writing.” The World of Indigenous North America. Ed. Robert Warrior. New York: Routledge, 2014: 291-307.
• “Notes Toward a Theory of Anomaly.” Special issue of GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, ed. Mark Rifkin, Bethany Schneider, and Daniel Heath Justice, 16.1-2 (2010): 207-42.

I’m not currently accepting additional graduate supervisions.

Indigenous scholars and community leaders in Canada and the US are increasingly calling for greater accountability and transparency in validating Indigenous affiliation claims and relations given high-profile cases of identity fraud in academia, the arts, business, and politics. This Declaration is provided in accordance with those calls for substantiation.

I’m an enrolled, at-large Cherokee Nation citizen born and raised in Colorado and now living on coastal shíshálh territory in Canada. ᏣᎳᎩᎯᎠᏰᎵ (Tsalagihi Ayeli-Cherokee Nation) is a federally recognized Indigenous Nation with a global population of 468,000 citizens and jurisdiction over a 7000 square mile reservation in northeast Oklahoma in the US. Through our 1999 Constitution (Article IV, Section 1), Cherokee Nation determines formal affiliation as citizenship through confirmed lineal descent from one or more original enrollees on our base 1907 Final Cherokee Dawes Roll.

My direct paternal ancestors as well as extended kin are listed in all key records used by Cherokee Nation authorities, researchers, and genealogists to substantiate legitimate, persistent, and ongoing Cherokee relations. Through my late citizen father, Jimmie J Justice, I am a direct descendant of Cherokee Spears and Foreman survivors of the Trail of Tears (Old Fields detachment) as well as Riley Cherokee Old Settlers who emigrated to Indian Territory before Removal, with extended Traitor Party relations and kinship and marriage ties to Crittenden, Parris, Rusk, and other citizen families. My mom, Deanna Kathline (Fay) Justice, was of English, Jewish, and mixed European settler heritage; I’m the third generation of her family to be raised in Victor, Colorado, on stolen Southern Ute homelands. 

My paternal grandmother, Pearl Clara Spears (later Justice, then Bowers), was a by-birth dual citizen of Cherokee Nation and the US; her father, Amos Spears, was a Cherokee Nation citizen, an original Dawes allottee, and a Cherokee Male Seminary alumnus; her great-grandfather, James Spears, was an elected member of the Cherokee National Council before and after Removal and a signatory to the Aquohee Resolution of 1838 and the reunification Constitution of 1839. Although our citizenship line in the Nation is unbroken, I was not raised culturally Cherokee: Pearl’s 1945 death from tuberculosis largely ruptured my dad’s relationship with her family, although his older sister Alverta remained close to our Spears kin. Dad and Alverta were estranged when I was young but reconciled when I was a teenager, and the restoration of our Cherokee relations, cultural commitments, and political obligations has grounded my subsequent life’s work, both at a distance and on regular trips to Oklahoma and the Cherokee Nation proper.

My citizenship status can be verified by contacting the Cherokee Nation Tribal Registration department directly by phone or email: 918-453-5058, registration@cherokee.org. As a member of Digadatseli’i ᏗᎦᏓᏤᎵᎢ Cherokee Scholars (an association of citizen-scholars from the three federally recognized Cherokee Tribal Nations) and signatory to the 2020 Cherokee Scholars’ Statement on Sovereignty and Identity, I don’t consider this information confidential (http://bit.ly/3QKwzT6).