Upstander Academy 2025
Rethreading the Needle of Native American History
Through Land and  Water-Based Learning

endawnis Spears (Diné, Ojibwe, Chickasaw, Choctaw) (she/her) is the director of outreach and programming and a founding member of the Akomawt Educational Initiative, an Indigenous education and interpretive consultancy. She has worked with and for Native communities and museums across the country. Previously, endawnis worked in the education, marketing and development departments of the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center. Originally from Camp Verde, Arizona, she lives in Rhode Island with her husband Cassius Spears Jr., and their four children, Nizhoni, Sowaniu, Giizghig and Tishominko.

Mishy Lesser, Ed.D., (she/her) is the learning director for Upstander Project and an Emmy® award-winning researcher. She is also a Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies Affiliate and was an Education Fellow at the Dodd Human Rights Impact at the University of Connecticut. Mishy has authored Upstander Project’s many learning and viewer guides. She is a Circle Keeper and has been featured on WBUR (Boston) and PRI/BBC’s The World. Mishy was a Fulbright Scholar in Ecuador and spent 12 years learning and working in the Andes. She is a descendant of Ashkenazi Jews whose ancestral language is Yiddish.

Roger Paul (Passamaquoddy, Wolastoq) (he/his) was born to a Passamaquoddy mother who, soon afterward, walked on to the spirit world. His father, who was Wolastoq, went to great lengths to protect him from state “child welfare” officials who wanted to send him away to a boarding school or place him in the foster care system. Thus, Roger grew up on various reservations throughout Maine and New Brunswick. His older brothers and sister were not as fortunate. They were taken and sent to the residential school at Shubenecadie. Roger holds a master’s degree in linguistics from MIT and works as a Wabanaki Languages teacher with the Penobscot Nation, the University of Maine at Orono, and the University of Southern Maine. He takes an active and diligent role towards the preservation, continuing growth, and prosperity of the Wabanaki language, culture, and people.

Dina Gilio-Whitaker (Colville Confederated Tribes) (she/her) is a lecturer of American Indian Studies at California State University San Marcos and a consultant and educator in environmental justice policy planning. Dina’s research focuses on Indigenous nationalism, self-determination, environmental justice, and education. Dina is co-author with Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz of All the Real Indians Died Off and 20 Other Myths About Native Americans and author of As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice from Colonization to Standing Rock.

Adam Mazo (he/his) is the director of Upstander Project and an Emmy® Award-winning social issue documentarian. Adam has (co)directed and/or produced all of Upstander Project’s films, including Dawnland, which won an Emmy® Award in 2018. His films have been broadcast on domestic and international television, programmed at film festivals and international conferences, and screened at universities and K-12 schools, where they are also often used in curricula.

Dr. Sarah B. Shear is an assistant professor of social studies and multicultural education at the University of Washington-Bothell. Sarah examines K-12 social studies curricula within Indigenous contexts, as well as race/ism and settler colonialism in K-12 social studies teacher education, popular media, and qualitative methodologies. As a member of the Turtle Island Social Studies Collective, Sarah is committed to collective action to combat oppression in education and academia. In addition, Sarah co-edited (Re)Imagining Elementary Social Studies: A Controversial Issues Reader (Information Age Press, 2018) and Marking the Invisible: Articulating Whiteness in Social Studies Education (Information Age Press, inc. press).

Maulian Bryant (Penobscot Nation tribal ambassador) (she/her) is codirector of and a participant in Bounty. She is an Upstander Project collaborator. She holds a BA in political science from the University of Maine and advocates for local, state, and federal policy changes centered on tribal sovereignty, the environment, public health, domestic violence advocacy, and other areas affecting the Wabanaki tribes in Maine. She is the cochair of the state's Permanent Commission on the Status of Racial, Indigenous and Maine Tribal Populations; cochair of the Maine Climate Council's Equity Subcommittee and member of the Maine Climate Council; Board President for the Wabanaki Alliance; member of the Permanent Commission on the Status of Women; and serves on many other boards and organizations. Her play, Molly, tells the story of Molly Spotted Elk, a Penobscot actress, writer, activist, and dancer in the early 1900s.

Chris Newell (Passamaquoddy) (he/his) is the Tribal Community Member-in-Residence at UConn and the director of education at the Akomawt Educational Initiative. He is a lifetime educator. He was born and raised in Motahkmikuhk (Indian Township, ME) and is a proud citizen of the Passamaquoddy Tribe at Indian Township. He served for six years as the Education Supervisor for the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center. Out of the museum, Chris and his colleagues founded the Akomawt Educational Initiative in response to the public school system’s lack of representation of Native history and social studies. Chris was the senior adviser on Dawnland.

Kristine Malpica, M.A. (she/her) is a researcher for Upstander Project focused on public history and the impacts of settler colonialism, cultural genocide, land dispossession, war and bounty proclamations on Indigenous peoples, past and present. Her work has contributed to the learning materials that accompany Bounty. Her thesis, "Uncommon Ground: Pawtucket-Pennacook Strategic Land Exchange in Native Spaces and Colonized Places of Essex County and Massachusetts Bay in the Seventeenth Century," examines Indigenous dispossession in Massachusetts Bay Colony. Kristine's lifelong passion for fostering and facilitating diverse public arts and cultural programming led her to cofound and direct a nonprofit organization, Imagine Studios, since 1998. She resides in N'dakinna, the ancestral territory of the Pawtucket-Pennacook-Abenaki Peoples.