Gord Bruyere is Anishnabe from Couchiching First Nation. His work experience includes stints as a child protection worker, a probation and parole officer, an Aboriginal student counselor and educator. He has developed post-secondary education and training curriculum focused on the relationship between Aboriginal peoples and Canadian society and has published related book chapters and scholarly journal articles. His teaching experience has focused on social work practice with Aboriginal peoples and on Aboriginal law in Canada. He is currently the Coordinator and Professor of Aboriginal Law & Advocacy Program of Negahneewin College of Indigenous Studies at Confederation College in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada. He is also a published poet and is currently collaborating on a collection of poetry centered on the process of becoming indigenous men.

Duane Champagne is a professor of sociology and Director of the American Indian Studies Center at UCLA.  He is a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa from North Dakota.  Professor Champagne has been Director of the UCLA American Indian Studies Center since 1991 and editor of the American Indian Culture and Research Journal since 1986.  He has authored and edited over seventy publications which include Native America:  Portraits of the Peoples, The Native North American Almanac, and Social Order and Political Change:  Constitutional Governments Among the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw and Creek.  Champagne’s research focuses primarily on issues of social and cultural change in both historical and contemporary Native American communities.  He has written about various Indian communities including:  Cherokee, Tlingit, Iroquois, Delaware, Choctaw, Northern Cheyenne, Creek, California Indians, and others.

Richard Howitt is Associate Professor of Human Geography at Macquarie University, Australia. He teaches resource management and has recently published Rethinking Resource Management: sustainability, justice and indigenous peoples (Routledge, 2001). His approach to integrating social theory, participatory action research and teaching was discussed in a paper in the 'Journal of Geography in Higher Education'. He has worked with Aboriginal groups in many parts of Australia, most recently as lead consultant to the Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement of South Australia on native title negotiations. His research interests include social impact assessment, indigenous rights and issues of geographical scale.

Carlos Alberto Torres, Professor of Social Sciences and Comparative Education and Director of the Latin American Center at UCLA, is a political sociologist. He is also Founding Director of the Paulo Freire Institute in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and has been visiting professor at universities in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Costa Rica, Mexico, Portugal, and Sweden, as well as having lectured throughout Latin America and the U.S. and in Great Britain, Japan, Korea, Tanzania, Mozambique, and South Africa. Professor Torres has authored 35 books and more than 135 research articles and chapters in books in several languages. A few of the most recent books are: Critical Social Theory and Education:  Freire, Habermas and the Dialogical Subject (with Raymond Morrow) New York, Teachers' College Press, Columbia  University, in press. Comparative Education:  The Dialectics of the Global and the Local (with Robert Arnove, editors)  Lanaham, Maryland, Rowman and Littlefield, 1999 Democracy, Education, and Multiculturalism:  Dilemmas of Citizenship in a Global World. Lanham, Maryland, Rowman and Littlefield, 1998.

Rebecca Tsosie is Professor of Law at Arizona State University, where she also serves as the Executive Director of ASU’s Indian Legal Program. She serves as a Supreme Court Justice for Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation. She was recently appointed as the Lincoln Professor of Native American Law and Ethics. She joined the faculty of the ASU College of Law in 1993, after practicing with the law firm of Brown & Bain. Ms. Tsosie graduated from UCLA School of Law in 1990, and she clerked for then Vice-Chief Justice Stanley G. Feldman before joining Brown & Bain. Ms. Tsosie teaches in the areas of Indian law and Property, and she is the author of several articles dealing with cultural resources, environmental policy, and cultural pluralism. Ms. Tsosie serves on the Board of Directors of the Native American Rights Fund. She is admitted to practice in Arizona and California.

Stefano Varese is Professor of Native American Studies at the University of California, Davis and Director of the Indigenous Research Center of the Americas. His research encompasses indigenous peoples of the Americas with a hemispheric and global perspective, issues of Indian community development for autonomy, rural-urban and transnational migration, and human rights. He has served as consultant on indigenous issues to UNESCO, the International Fund for Agricultural Development of the U.N. (Rome), United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the World Bank, and the Inter-American Foundation. His book Salt of the Mountain is being published by the University of Oklahoma Press. Other books are: Las Minorías Etnicas y la Comunidad Nacional (Lima, 1974), Indígenas y Educación en México (México, 1983), Proyectos Etnicos y Proyectos Nacionales (México, 1984), Pueblos Indios, Soberanía y Globalismo (Quito, 1996).

Aram A. Yengoyan (Ph.D. Anthropology, University of Chicago,l964) teaches at the University of California, Davis. Previously he taught at the University of Michigan from l963 to l990. His area of ethnographic work is primarily in the southern Philippines and also among the Pitjantjatjara of the western desert in central Australia. Over the past twenty years he has published on cultural theory, language and culture, ideology and culture, issues of race and cultural identity, and recent trends in comparison within the social sciences and humanities. Some of his recent publications are (1) "Universalism and Utopianism", in Comparative Studies in Society and History, l997 (2) Reflections on Ideas of Culture, Civilization, Politics and Aesthetics: Franz Boas, Georg Simmel, and Thomas Mann, in Social Analysis, l997 (3) L'Aborigene, La Race et L'Etat, in Annales/Histoire, Sciences Sociales ,l997 (4) "Foreword: Culture and Power in the Writings of Eric R. Wolf", in Pathways of Power, by Eric R. Wolf, 200l, University of California Press.