Indigenous Student Seminar Seminar Faculty

The Hoover Indigenous Student Seminar offers top college students and recent graduates an opportunity to engage with scholars and policy practitioners on the campus of Stanford University.

Attendees of the week-long, fully funded program participate in focused seminars led by scholars and policy practitioners who focus on issues affecting indigenous communities in the United States and elsewhere.

Please see below to reference the faculty for the 2024 Indigenous Student Seminar. We will update the 2025 faculty bios as we confirm our speaker lineup.

Terry Anderson
Terry L. Anderson is the John and Jean De Nault Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is the past president of the Property and Environment Research Center in Bozeman, Montana, and a professor emeritus at Montana State University, where he won many teaching awards during his twenty-year career. Anderson authored Free Market Environmentalism (3rd edition, 2015) and co-founded the concept of using markets and property rights to address environmental issues. Dr. Anderson received his PhD from the University of Washington and has been a visiting scholar at Oxford University, Basel University, Clemson University, and Cornell University, and a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Canterbury.

Aldo Aragon
Aldo Aragon earned a History A.B. cum laude from Harvard University. During his time at Harvard, Aldo was a 2023 Truman Scholarship on-campus finalist and one of eight students chosen to deliver the 2024 undergraduate English commencement address. His studies include American legal history, American-Indian history, and Pacific history. Aldo embarked on extensive travel during his senior year, covering over 20,000 miles to and from Oceania. His travels served as a backdrop for his magna cum laude thesis focusing on Polynesia. Aldo will serve as a Post-Baccalaureate Fellow at Dumbarton Oaks, a leading Pre-Columbian research institution located in the U.S. capital, during the 2024-2025 academic year.

Adam Crepelle 
Adam Crepelle is a professor at Loyola University Chicago School of Law. His research focuses on federal Indian law and policy, particularly economic development and criminal justice. Professor Crepelle serves as an associate justice on the Court of Appeals for the Pascua Yaqui Tribe. He previously served as the Association of American Law Schools chair of the Indian Nations and Indigenous Peoples Section.

Donn Feir 
Donn. L. Feir is a professor, applied economist, and economic historian focusing on Indigenous well-being, policy, and history in North America. Feir is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economics Research and a research fellow at the IZA Institute of Labor Economics. Feir is a Canadian and recipient of a PhD from the Vancouver School of Economics at the University of British Columbia.
 

Deanna Kennedy 
Deanna Kennedy PhD, is Dean of the College of Business and Economics at Western Washington University. Dr. Kennedy is a tribal member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. She publishes Indigenous business research and course material to advance culturally diverse business strategies and educational pathways. She is the associate editor of the Indigenous Business and Public Administration Journal and an editor of the book American Indian Business: Principles and Practices.

Misty Kuhl
Misty Kuhl was born in Havre, Montana, and is an A’aniih (White Clay) citizen of the Fort Belknap Indian Community. Kuhl is a first-generation college graduate and earned a bachelor of science in human services (cum laude) from Montana State University Billings. In 2021, Governor Greg Gianforte appointed her as the director of the Montana Department of Indian Affairs, where among many responsibilities she serves as a liaison between the State of Montana and the eight sovereign Native nations in the state. Currently, this role brings Kuhl to the 67th Montana Legislature in Helena, Montana, where she is working with the Montana American Indian Caucus, made up of eight representatives and four senators. As the director of the Department of Indian Affairs, she closely monitors legislation and budget issues that involve or impact Indian Country.

André Le Dressay 
André Le Dressay is the director of Tulo Centre of Indigenous Economics. He has supported the development of eleven First Nation–led legislative changes and helped implement jurisdictions in almost four hundred First Nations to support economic growth. He has over twenty-five years of experience working with Indigenous communities, organizations, institutions, and local governments. Le Dressay holds a PhD in Economics from Simon Fraser University, a master's degree in Applied Economics from the University of Victoria, and an honors degree in Math and Economics from the University of Regina. 

Robert J. Miller 
Robert J. Miller is the Jonathan and Wendy Rose Professor of Law at Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, Arizona State University, where he is also the Willard H. Pedrick Distinguished Research Scholar and director of the Rosette LLP American Indian Economic Development Program. Miller is a citizen of the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2014. He authored "Reservation 'Capitalism': Economic Development in Indian Country" (Praeger 2012) and co-authored "A Promise Kept: The Muscogee (Creek) Nation and McGirt v. Oklahoma" (University of Oklahoma Press 2023), among other works.

Richard Monette
Richard Monette was twice elected to serve as chairman and CEO of Turtle Mountain Chippewa Tribe. Monette is a professor of law at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he teaches federal Indian Law, conflict of laws, state constitutional law, and water quantity law. For thirty years, Monette has served as the faculty director of the Great Lakes Indigenous Law Center. At the start of his career, he served as a staff attorney for the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs under the leadership of senators Dan Inouye (D-HI), John McCain (R-AZ), and Dan Evans (R-AZ).

Dominic Parker
Dominic Parker is the Ilene and Morton Harris Senior Fellow (adjunct) at the Hoover
Institution, where he codirects projects on Renewing Indigenous Economies and Markets vs. Mandates for the Environment and Energy. He is the Anderson-Bascom Professor of Applied Economics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Parker’s expertise is in the economics of development, natural resources, and energy policy with a focus on the role of property rights, rule of law, and governance.

Haley Rains
Haley Rains (Muscogee Creek) was born and raised in Billings, Montana. She earned her PhD in Native American Studies (UC Davis) and is a UC President’s/Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in the UC Santa Cruz Film and Digital Media department. Rains is also a photographer, documentary filmmaker, and second assistant director of feature films. Her portfolio includes videos for Nine Inch Nails, Avenged Sevenfold, Theory of a Deadman, and many other popular bands.

C. Matthew Snipp
C. Matthew Snipp is the Burnet C. and Mildred Finley Wohlford Professor of Humanities and Sciences in the Department of Sociology at Stanford University. He is also the Vice Provost for faculty development, diversity, and engagement. His research and writing deal with the demography of the American Indian population and changes in the well-being of American ethnic minorities. He is an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma.

Daniel Stewart
Dan Stewart (Spokane Tribe) is a professor of Entrepreneurship and Director of the Hogan Entrepreneur Center at Gonzaga University. He has coedited two volumes in Native American Business and Economics: Creating Private Sector Economies in Native America and Principles of American Indian Business. His work on Indigenous entrepreneurship has been featured on NPR and Indian Country Today. Recently, Stewart was selected as a member of the CNBC Disruptor 50 Advisory Board.

Thomas Stratmann
Thomas Stratmann holds a PhD in economics from the University of Maryland. He is a distinguished university professor at George Mason University, where he holds an appointment as professor of economics at the Department of Economics and has a courtesy appointment at the Antonin Scalia Law School.

Derrick Watchman 
Derrick Watchman is an experienced executive with over 35 years of commercial and tribal business experience in gaming and banking. Derrick is President of Sagebrush Hill Group LLC, a tribal affairs, financial advisory services, and economic development advisory company based in Window Rock, Navajo Nation, Arizona. Mr. Watchman holds an MBA from the University of California and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Arizona.

Bart J. WilsonBart J. Wilson is a professor of Economics and Law and the Donald P. Kennedy Endowed Chair in Economics and Law at Chapman University. He is director of the Smith Institute for Political Economy and Philosophy, which he founded in 2016. Wilson has published papers widely in economics and general science journals and is the author of Meaningful Economics (forthcoming from Oxford University Press) and coauthor of Humanomics: Moral Sentiments and the Wealth of Nations for the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge University Press).