Contact Information
American Indian Studies
1204 W Nevada St.
Urbana, IL 61801
Biography
Natasha Myhal is an enrolled citizen of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians. She is an Assistant Professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Prior to joining the AIS program at UIUC, she was a Provost’s Fellow of Indigenous Environmental Studies at Ohio State.
She received her doctorate from the University of Colorado Boulder in Critical Ethnic Studies with a graduate certificate in Native American and Indigenous studies and an area of emphasis in Geography. Prior to her PhD, she received her Master’s in Indigenous Studies from the University of Kansas, and her bachelors in American Indian Studies and Environmental Studies from the University of Minnesota, Morris – a Native American Serving Nontribal Institution.
Her manuscript in progress concerns Ottawa and Anishinaabe current and traditional homelands and waters in what is now territorialized as Michigan. A defining characteristic of the manuscript focuses on contemporary Anishinaabe political structures with kin such as Nmé (lake sturgeon). It is based on an 11-month ethnographic community work stay with the Little River Band of Ottawa Indians Tribal Natural Resources Department, which also included archival research and interviews. Her manuscript and broader research represent a commitment to research led with, by, and for Indigenous communities. Her approach to engaging in research emphasizes the importance of storytelling from the perspectives of Elders, Tribal members, and descendants, ultimately emphasizing their ways of knowing.
Dr. Myhal has received fellowships from the National Science Foundation, Newberry Consortium in American Indian Studies, The Cobell Scholarship Fund, and the Intertribal Timber Council. From 2022 to 2023 she was the Henry Roe Cloud Dissertation Fellow at Yale University, hosted by the department of American Studies and the Yale Group for the Study of Native America.
Her work has been published in refereed journals such as Geoforum, Garden and Landscape Studies, and the American Institute of the History of Pharmacy. She has also contributed to edited collections regarding topics such as National Parks and Native Sovereignty and Anthropological Optimism.
Research Interests
In her current research, she works collaboratively with the Little River Band of Ottawa Indians Tribal Natural Resources Department and their Nmé (Lake Sturgeon) Stewardship Program. Nmé epistemologies animate her research commitments to understand how Indigenous spatial logics orient how Anishinaabe communities define what is important to them amid ongoing resistance to colonialism. Furthermore, her current research is rooted in Anishinaabe place-based knowledge, which is supported through the stories that Anishinaabe people express about themselves, their language, and their homelands.
Professional Associations
Native American and Indigenous Studies Association
Association of American Geographers
Last Updated September 2025
Research Description
As a scholar, she is firmly rooted in the discipline Indigenous studies, while also gathering together the fields of human geography and anthropology to analyze how the colonially created discourse of resource, relative, and threatened species affects Indigenous life. She is concerned with how contemporary Anishinaabe governance in the Great Lakes region contest these accounts and support their overall sovereignty and celebrate their agency. She pays particular attention to sites of knowledge production that inform climate change as understood by Indigenous peoples themselves.
Education
PhD Critical Ethnic Studies with a concentration in Native American and Indigenous Studies, University of Colorado Boulder (2023)
MA Indigenous Studies, University of Kansas (2017)
BA American Indian Studies & Environmental Studies, University of Minnesota, Morris (2015)
Recent Publications
Gottschalk Druschke, C., Booth, E. G., Demuth, B., Holtgren, J. M., Lave, R., Lundberg, E. R., Myhal, N., Sellers, B., Widell, S., & Woelfle-Hazard, C. A. (2024). Re-centering relations: The trouble with quick fix approaches to beaver-based restoration. Geoforum, 156, Article 104121. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2024.104121
Myhal, N. (2024). Review: C. Thomas Shay's Under Prairie Skies: The Plants and Peoples of the Northern Plains. American Indian Culture and Research Journal, 47(3). https://doi.org/10.17953/A3.34839
Neely, B., & Myhal, N. (2024). Indigenous Connections at Rocky Mountain National Park: Notes from a Collaboration in Progress. In C. G. Hill, M. J. Hill, & B. Neely (Eds.), National Parks, Native Sovereignty: Experiments in Collaboration University of Oklahoma Press.
Myhal, N. (2023). Indigenous Knowledge as a Disruption to State-Led Conservation. In A. Olive, C. Finegan, & K. F. Beazley (Eds.), Transformative Politics of Nature: Overcoming Barriers to Conservation in Canada (pp. 191-192). University of Toronto Press. https://doi.org/10.3138/9781487550516.017
Myhal, N., & Carroll, C. (2023). Indigenous Optimism in the Colonialcene. In A. Willow (Ed.), Anthropological Optimism: Engaging the Power of What Could Go Right (pp. 88-103). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/b23231-6