Elan Holt Pochedley

Biography

Elan Pochedley is the 1855 Professor of Great Lakes Anishinaabe Knowledge, Spiritualities, and Cultural Practices in the Department of Religious Studies at Michigan State University. In his scholarship, he chronicles how traditional stories, teachings, roles, and ecological knowledge inform how Anishinaabe/Neshnabé nations’ citizens and personnel enact their ethical responsibilities towards mnomen/manoomin (wild rice), kno/migizi (eagles), nmé/name (sturgeon), and mbish/nibi (waters) in the present. He also studies how technological innovations and incorporations have been made by the Anishinaabeg/Neshnabék in efforts to care for their other-than-human relations. Pochedley received his PhD from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota, where he also earned dual graduate minors in American Indian & Indigenous Studies (AIIS) and Heritage Studies & Public History (HSPH). His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation and the Mellon Foundation, and he recently completed his two-year term as the Charles Eastman Fellow at Dartmouth College. Pochedley is an enrolled citizen of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation.