My Lingít name is Xéetl’ee and I am from Kax̲átjaa Hít (Shattering House) of the Kiks.ádi Clan in Sheet'ká (Sitka, Alaska). I am a tribal citizen of the Sitka Tribe of Alaska and the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska. 

I am currently a PhD candidate in Native American and Indigenous Studies at the University of California, Davis. My background in the arts and embodiment informs my community-engaged research and activism. My work crosses into critical Indigenous Studies, Improvisation and Performance Studies, and Feminist Science and Technology Studies. My current creative projects center embodied practices and oral histories of Kiks.ádi Herring Ladies that enact deep relations to Herring relatives and interconnected ecosystems. As a Herring Lady, my work is embedded in my own relationships and responsibilities to my Lingít community and Herring relatives. 

I am a visual artist, filmmaker, dancer, scholar, and educator. I grew up on the Central Coast of California on Northern Chumash homelands and currently live and work in Sheet’ká. I danced professionally before receiving my BA in Art Practice from UC Berkeley in 2011. After living in the Bay Area where I began filming dance, I moved to Berlin where I lived for several years working in film, movement, and drawing. My "dance film" works have been screened internationally at film festivals. In 2021, I received an MA in Native American Studies from UC Davis. I am deeply engaged in the Herring Protectors movement in Sitka. 

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*This space is mostly for archiving my creative research projects over the years. 

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Gunalchéesh hat yigoodí! Thank you for coming!

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photo by Malia Photography