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Gabrielle Tayac | |
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Nationality | American |
Occupation(s) | Historian, Curator and Activist |
Known for | National Museum of the American Indian, League of Indigenous Sovereign Nations, Spirit Aligned. |
Gabrielle Tayac is a historian and curator at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian. [1] She is a member of the Piscataway Indian Nation, a state-recognized tribe in southern Maryland. [1] Tayac is active in matters of Indigenous land and water rights as well as U.S. government treaty compliance. [2] [3] [4] [5]
Tayac was born in Greenwich Village, New York City. [6] She received her BS in social work and American Indian studies from Cornell University in 1989 and her PhD in sociology from Harvard University in 1999. [6] [7] She is the niece of Piscataway Chief Billy Redwing Tayac. [5]
Tayac began her career at the National Museum of the American Indian as a research consultant in 1999. [1] [8] Previously, she had worked to develop a school curriculum that would present the complexity of native peoples and address contemporary issues such as intellectual property. [1] Tayac helped develop the museum's education department, and her research assisted in shaping its educational role and framework. [1]
After the museum's inauguration in 2004, Tayac joined the full-time staff as a curator. [1] She co-curated one of the museums inaugural permanent exhibits, "Our Lives: Contemporary Life and Identity." [1] She was the sole curator of the exhibit "Return to a Native Place: Native Peoples of the Chesapeake Region", which opened in 2007. [1] [8] She also co-curated the traveling exhibit "IndiVisible: African-Native American Lives in the Americas". [8] Her latest exhibit, "Native New York: Where Nations Rise", is scheduled to open in 2019. [8]
Tayac has been active on various matters relating to Native American civil rights and tribal sovereignty. [9] [5] [2] She is a co-founder of the League of Indigenous Sovereign Nations, a hemispheric alliance of Native peoples. [8] Currently, she serves as communications director for the Spirit Aligned Leadership Program. [8]
In 2014, Tayac marched with the Cowboy Indian Alliance to protest the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. [10] [4] [3] In 2016, she participated in protests against the imprisonment of Leonard Peltier, a member of the American Indian Movement arrested in the Pine Ridge Reservation protests in the 1970s. [4] In 2017, Tayac provided one of the opening remarks at the People's Climate March on President Trump's 100th day in office. [2]