Faculty and Staff
DR. BIRGIT HANS 
Professor & Department Chair
Ph.D. in English
University of Arizona, 1998
701-777-4649
birgit.hans@email.und.edu
Dr. Hans has been a member of the Indian Studies department at UND since 1991. Her specialty is American Indian literature and oral traditions, but she also teaches writing and history courses and has an interest in popular literature. As a former German citizen, she is interested in, and has conducted long-term field research on European perceptions of American Indian cultures. Dr. Hans is also interested in historical and contemporary quilting, particularly star quilts.
Dr. Hans has published extensively on D'Arcy McNickle, including a collection of his unpublished short stories, called The Hawk is Hungry. Other publications include papers in Studies in American Indian Literatures, the North Dakota Quarterly, and Studies in the Western, as well as various edited collections. Her newest book, D'Arcy McNickle's The Hungry Generations: The Evolution of a Novel, was released by the University of New Mexico Press in Spring of 2007.
DR. GREGORY GAGNON
Associate Professor
Ph.D. in History
University of Maryland, 1970
701-777-6148
gregory.gagnon@email.und.edu
Dr. Gregory Gagnon (Bad River Band, Lake Superior Chippewa) received his Ph. D. from the University of Maryland in 1970. He joined the University of North Dakota Indian Studies Department in 1997 after nearly seventeen years as the Vice President for Instructional Affairs and other administrative positions and teaching in the Lakota Studies and General Studies departments at Oglala Lakota College on Pine Ridge Reservation. He was an administrator and faculty member at colleges in New Jersey and Illinois earlier. Dr. Gagnon continues as a consultant for several tribal colleges including Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe College, Leech Lake Tribal College and Oglala Lakota College. He has consulted in governance and curriculum areas for several other tribal colleges too; until 2010, he was a consultant-evaluator and team chair for the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association.
His Sioux Culture and Society is scheduled for publication by ABC-CLIO in May, 2011. Native Peoples of the Northern Plains (2009) was co-authored with department colleagues. A revised edition is expected in 2011. Dr. Gagnon has published Pine Ridge Reservation: Yesterday and Today (1992), In A Good Way (2006), An Indian Chapbook (2nd ed., 2006), and Fiduciary For Seven Generations: The Tribal College Trustee (2004). He publishes several book reviews and review articles for several journals and Choice Magazine annually. His chapter, on Chippewa religion and social justice, is awaiting publication by Wiley-Blackwell is awaiting publication with Professor Michael Palmer as editor of the Blackwell Companion volume, Religion and Social Justice.
Dr. Gagnon teaches Chippewa History, Sioux History, History of Federal Indian Law and Policy, Reservation Government and Politics, and Indians in the 21st Century. He and Ellen Gagnon team teach Indians in Children’s Literature. His research interests include those areas of teaching and he has published articles, reviews, and teaching materials in them. Currently, he is working on Chippewa reactions to steamboat incursions into Chippewa country for a Public Television documentary and on an invited article on integrating the teaching of Indian history and topics in American history courses. He has been a principle investigator on numerous grants and an external evaluator for Indian Studies programs at several colleges and universities.
DR. SEBASTIAN BRAUN 
Associate Professor
Ph.D. in Anthropology
Indiana University, 2004
701-777-4315
sebastian.braun@email.und.edu
Dr. Braun is a socio-cultural anthropologist specializing on North America. Prior to his Ph.D. at Indiana University, he earned a lic.phil.I (M.A.) in Ethnology, modern History, and Philosophy from the Universitaet Basel in Switzerland.
In North America, Dr. Braun has done research on Adena, Hopewell, and Mississippian societies, pre-and protohistoric interethnic relationships in Alaska and the Yukon, contemporary tribal bison ranching and human-animal relations on the Great Plains, and indigenous nationalism. His interests are concerned with perspectives and constructions of the environment, broadly defined: the cultural meanings and relationships that people assign to their social, natural and spiritual environments. This leads to interests in narrative, ritual and symbolic representation, in language and socio-linguistics, and in the intersection between economies, ecologies, politics and power.
Among the courses Dr. Braun is teaching regularly at UND are those on cultural ecology, resource management, health and culture, sustainable development, identity, traditional and contemporary Plains Indian cultures, and the history of the Lakota and Dakota nations. He has published articles and a monograph on buffalo ranching and economic development (Buffalo Inc. American Indians and Economic Development; University of Oklahoma Press 2008), and has been writing the chapters on the United States for the yearbook of the International Work Group on Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA) since 2005. Several chapters for edited volumes are currently in various stages of preparation for publication, ranging in topic from economic development to indigenous nationalism to the portrayal of American Indians in francophone comics. Dr. Braun's current book project is an edited volume focusing on narrative, community and kinship in ethnohistorical research.
DR. KIMBERLY COWDEN
Assistant Professor
Ph.D. in Communication
North Dakota State University, 2010
701-777-3168
kimberly.cowden@email.und.edu
Cowden is an assistant professor at the University of North Dakota where she instructs graduate and undergraduate courses in advertising, public relations, and health communication. Her research focus is health communication, risk and crisis communication and public relations research. She specializes in participatory action research methods working closely with American Indian communities.
Cowden is an award-winning writer, producer, and director who has professionally designed communication materials for 15 years. While a member of the communication faculty, Cowden’s tenure-track line is housed in the Department of Indian Studies.
In addition to her professional background, Cowden served five years as a research fellow for the National Center for Food Protection and Defense and has been invited to present her research at several national and international conferences. Her work has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as The Journal of Business Communication and Communication, Culture, and Critique.