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PROPOSED APPOINTMENT
Appointee(s): Alaka Wali
Position: Member
Department/Board/Commission: Conservation and Policy Council
Effective Date: Immediate
Expiration Date: 12/31/2027
Alaka Wali is curator emerita of North American Anthropology in the Science and Education Division of the Field Museum. Alaka was born in India and came to the United States as a child. Curious about issues of cultural identity, she studied anthropology at Harvard and Columbia, focusing on the challenges facing Indigenous peoples and their efforts to maintain cultural practices and worldviews.
She was the founding director of the Center for Cultural Understanding and Change at The Field Museum from 1995- 2010. During that time, she pioneered the development of participatory social science research and community engagement processes based in museum science. She curated the North American collection, one of the Museum's largest regional anthropology holdings. Since 2000, she has worked closely with ecologists and museum educators to develop innovative community engagement strategies for people living in and around biodiverse regions of the Western Amazon and urban Chicago to expand inclusion of their voices in environmental conservation efforts.
Her research focuses on the relationship between art and the capacity for social resilience. She has authored several books, and published monographs and more than 50 articles on a wide range of topics, including museum practice, political ecology, racialized health disparities and urban anthropology. She has curated numerous exhibitions, pioneering co-curated exhibitions with Native American contemporary artists. She led the curation of the exhibition-Native Truths: Our Voices, Our Stories which opened in May 2022 and broke new ground for the Field Museum with a deeply collaborative approach that privileges the perspectives of Native American scholars, artists and community members. A companion edited volume became available in 2024 from BAR Publishing.
From 2016-2024, Alaka served on the Board of the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation which focuses on land conservation and artistic vitality in Chicago and the Low Country of South Carolina. She has also served on other Chicago region Boards including the Chicago Cultural Alliance and the Latin School of Chicago.
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