Cassidy Schoenfelder
Ph.D. Student
Cassidy Schoenfelder (Oglala Lakota) is a geography doctoral student at the University of Arizona. Raised in the Midwest, she traveled to complete her undergraduate degree in art at the University of Montana and then further west where she earned her master's in the History of Art and Architecture from the University of Oregon. She researches the art and visual culture of landscape in the tribal/federal co-managed national parks on Turtle Island. Her research explores how Indigenous visual sovereignty (IVS) can counter representations of erasure as a decolonial initiative. IVS centers Indigenous ways of knowing and reclaims self-representation in art, media, film, advertisements, infrastructure and physical embodiment. Schoenfelder is dedicated to combining her interests in art, geography, and environment and situates her work within critical storywork.