Katelyn Stiles (Xéetl'ee) is a Lingít artist, filmmaker, dancer, teacher, and scholar working in community-based creative research. She is Raven of the Kiks.ádi Clan and Jumping Herring House of Sheet'ká (Sitka), and is an enrolled tribal member of the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska and the Sitka Tribe of Alaska. Katelyn grew up on Northern Chumash homelands (California) and lived in Berlin, Germany for several years where she specialized in video documentation of dance and "dance film." Her film work has been screened internationally in film festivals and she has danced professionally in different contexts. She received her BA in Art Practice with a minor in Dance/Performance Studies from UC Berkeley, where she focused in movement based filmmaking and figurative drawing. She holds an MA in Native American Studies from UC Davis and is currently pursuing a PhD in Native American Studies with a Designated Emphasis in Performance and Practice. Her research crosses into critical Indigenous Studies, Improvisation and Performance Studies, and Feminist Science and Technology Studies. Katelyn's current collaborations center embodied practices of Kiks.ádi Herring Ladies of Sheet'ka (Sitka, Alaska) that enact deep relations to our Herring relatives and interconnected ecosystems. As a Herring Protector organizer and Herring lady herself, this film project is embedded in relationships and process-based realities of Indigenous Knowledge Systems.

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