About Me

Larissa is a member of the Diné Nation. She is of the Mud People and is born for the Mountain Cove People. She was born and raised on the Navajo Nation, in a small community in northern Arizona. She has pursued her passion for cultural revitalization, language reclamation, repatriation of stolen sacred Diné treasures, and the preservation of historical places.

Larissa is an alumnus of the University of Notre Dame with a Bachelor of Arts in Art History and a minor in Sociology. She currently serves as the Communications Director on the University of Notre Dame Native American Alumni Board and a Committee Member on the College Arts Association Students & Emerging Leaders Committee.

Larissa is a recipient of awards from the Council for Museum Anthropology, Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums, Portland Community College, and the Institute for International Education.

Popular posts from this blog

The Exploitation of Native Imagery

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Cover image from Radical Indigenous Survivance and Empowerment (R.I.S.E.). To honor and respect the tribes mentioned in this article, no visual representation of any sacred items, dances, ceremonies, photographs, etc. will be shown. This article was originally published on Terra Incognita Media in 2017. I'm sharing this article on my personal blog with minor grammatical updates and revisions. History of Native Imagery in Art Historic black and white photographs of Native Americans in documentaries, books, stationery, or even on posters, are very likely to be one of the innumerable works of the photographer, Edward S. Curtis (1868-1952). Curtis was a photographer and ethnologist most known for his multi-volume series, The North American Indian. The photographic images in this series were taken between 1907-1927 and were meant to be a journal, of sorts, that documented “the vanishing race” of Native Americans. At the turn of the nineteenth century, the western U.S. wa...
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Why being Indigenous and a (hopeful) art historian is important.

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Lauren Good Day Giago, “Independence Day Celebration” (2012), antique ledger paper, colored pencil, graphite, ink, felt-tipped marker (photo by Ernest Amoroso/NMAI) I've wondered how to (re-)start this blog and what direction to go since, well, this might be the second or third time that I've wiped it clean and tried to start again. This time around, I think I finally know what I want to share with you all - my experiences and journey as a Diné student, scholar, and young professional. Yes, yes, I know, there are already established and great blogs of the same genre. So why does my little space on the internet matter? Well, I hope that what I can share will give some insight into my journey in the world of art history and museums, my research interests and plans to get published, and my experiences related to fellowships, jobs, volunteer activities, and so forth. In addition to the first-person narratives and opinions being shared, I also want to highlight other voices an...
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