Meet Our Founding Authors
When we first started on this journey, we weren't sure if we'd get authors to join us, but to our joy, we have some incredible, talented, compassionate authors who stood up to put their talent to work for Missing and Murdered Indigenous People.
We'd like to take a moment and thank them for their generosity, their faith in us, and their determination to see all Indigenous people lifted up. Please take a moment to read their bios and learn about these wonderful people.
Weyodi OldBear is an award-winning science fiction author and is widely recognized as one of the best authors of Indigenous Futurism alive today, she is also a Nebula Award-nominated game designer. Her work is infused with her cultural perspective, built on the teachings of her strong matriarchal ancestors, she provides readers with insights and a fresh perspective readers have longed for in the feminist dystopian genre since Octavia Butler set the bar. In 2018 she was awarded the Imagining Indigenous Futurisms prize for her story “Red Lessons”.
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Weyodi began college at an early age but eventually forged her own path and crafted a broader education for herself than any single institution could provide. This makes it no surprise that, in addition to her work as a storyteller, Weyodi is also a natural educator. From speaking at conferences and summits on topics ranging from the roles of activism and resistance in science fiction, to being a keynote speaker at the fourth Shifting Seasons Summit: Implementing Climate Resistance, to developing resources and programs for emerging writers and creators, it is in her nature to be generous with her insights and knowledge.
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Weyodi began college at an early age but eventually forged her own path and crafted a broader education for herself than any single institution could provide. This makes it no surprise that, in addition to her work as a storyteller, Weyodi is also a natural educator. From speaking at conferences and summits on topics ranging from the roles of activism and resistance in science fiction, to being a keynote speaker at the fourth Shifting Seasons Summit: Implementing Climate Resistance, to developing resources and programs for emerging writers and creators, it is in her nature to be generous with her insights and knowledge.
Born on the shores of Long Island Sound among her father’s people, OldBear was raised among her mother’s people, The Comanche Nation of Oklahoma, where she is a voting citizen. After the death of her grandparents in 2013 and 2014 she left Oklahoma for other parts of traditional Comanche territory.
Partially blind and subject to seizures she has 5 novels currently under contract and has written hundreds of poems, speculative fiction and science fiction short stories, and comics, in addition to a historical play about her great great grandparents Weckeah OldBear and Quanah Parker. She writes from a Numunu (Comanche) perspective because that is her original factory setting.
Weyodi is also one of the principal writers for the groundbreaking Indigenous Futurist tabletop Role Playing Game Coyote & Crow, which earned her a 2021 Nebula nomination. Her novel “As Many Ships As Stars”, released in October of 2024 by Android Press, received warm reviews from Publishers Weekly. The first book in her first trilogy series “The Root and The Seed”, from Greasy Grass Press, received a glowing review from celebrated Indigenous storyteller and editor Shane Hawk and is available now as an Ebook and pre-orders for the illustrated print version can be placed on their (our) website. Issue #1 of The Clock comic will be released in the summer of 2025 by Green Archer Press with more volumes on the way. “Chunky Atakwasi; Finder of Lost Loves” a graphic novel from Native Realities Press is slated to be released in the next year. Her comic credits include the “A Howl” anthology edited by Beth laPensee, the Lakota Legal Collective’s Guide for Water Protectors published by Stanford University Press, and several upcoming comics by Warpaint Studios.
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Dandan Hansen was raised on the Coeur d’Alene Indian Reservation. He grew up listening to stories told over the fire, and those stories have shaped his life and his writing. He is an enrolled member of the Village of Kotzebue Indigenous Nation as well as a NANA Shareholder. Through his career as a gaming consultant and casino executive he has strived to make a positive impact on the Nations in which he works. He has lived and worked alongside numerous Indigenous Nations around the United States.
Dandan Hansen was raised on the Coeur d’Alene Indian Reservation. He grew up listening to stories told over the fire, and those stories have shaped his life and his writing. He is an enrolled member of the Village of Kotzebue Indigenous Nation as well as a NANA Shareholder. Through his career as a gaming consultant and casino executive he has strived to make a positive impact on the Nations in which he works. He has lived and worked alongside numerous Indigenous Nations around the United States.
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Dandan has an MBA, a JD, a bachelor’s in philosophy, and has extensive speaking experience through his consulting and work. He loves gardening and thru hiking as well as writing. Dandan’s non-fiction titles include Becoming a Trust Based Manager and Slot Machine Analytics Simplified, while his fiction includes This Life as Told by an Old Indian, and the Trickster War series of novels as well as a host of short fiction which can be found on his www.ourorchard.co.
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Wapshkankwet S. Perrote is a part-time poet and visual artist. She recently graduated again, after studying Sociology, with an emphasis on death studies reclaiming traditional death care practices. She has a background as a Qualified Mental Health Care Provider, who specialized in Grief and Loss work and is an award winning Funeral Director who specializes in closed- death care practices working towards reviving non-traditional burials (Americanized burials). Wapshkankwet is an active citizen of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation. She is committed to making information on grief & loss work and end of life planning easily accessible and available to all.
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Her published works include: Speaking Silently and Ant Hills: Stories of Girls in a Group and her artwork can be seen at melancholynow.com
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Her published works include: Speaking Silently and Ant Hills: Stories of Girls in a Group and her artwork can be seen at melancholynow.com
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Nick Vary is an Indigenous (Diné) Intersex activist who also happens to be non-binary, transgender and gay. He is a published author who writes on the intricacies of how the Doctrine of Discovery and colonization orchestrate today's gender disaster. Nick is currently writing a series of "Intersex survival guides" to help intersex folks and their parents navigate healthcare, travel, and other situations in today's world. Nick is a former board president of InterConnect, one of the largest Intersex community-based organizations in the US, and the founder of PIE (Project for Intersex Ethnographies) which will help drive medical progress for Indigenous Intersex people and the Intersex community, as well as creating community projects and resources for Intersex people.
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Nick has also recently written for the UN, detailing how colonization has impacted not only his life, but entire cultures, helping to create understanding of how to break harmful colonial systems from the inside out and spoken for organizations like the Mayo Clinic. His other works can be found in Otherwise Christian volumes 1, 2, and 3, and The Spectrum of Sex.
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M Barrett is a mixed race Cherokee and Muskogee retired educator and Association of Science & Technology museum director now working as a full time artist and writer. She is the great grand niece and final student of Cherokee traditional farmer and life-long speaker of all four Tsalagi languages, Bernice Barrett.
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Mickey has been speaking professionally about education policy, social issues, and youth justice reform for more than 20 years. In addition to working as a professional development trainer for the California School Age Consortium and as a NAEYC (the National Association for the Education of Young Children) accreditation trainer for Crystal Stairs of Los Angeles, she has given numerous conference talks, workshops and keynote speeches, as well as sat on panels, from speaking on behalf of the Society for Neuroscience at the NSTA's national convention in 2007 to speaking on the first all-Indigenous-women panel in SXSWFest's (South by Southwest festival) history in 2021.
Her first art show was a collection of paintings and mixed media photography at William Colburn's Iron-Age Gallery in 1996, since then her art has been shown on three continents. Working as a metal-smith, painter, graphic designer, print maker, animator, textile, multimedia and new media artist she continues to create fine art while also working as a graphic designer with organizations (like NCOA, PWT and NTVTWT) that help move the greater Indigenous community forward.
She has won an American Library of Poets Editor's Choice Award, as well as the Marcia Lewis Scholarship for American Craft as a fine-art metalsmith. Her volunteer work has included working as stage manager, choreographer and costumer for the California Children's Choir and she was also asked by the president of The California Sickle Cell Disease Foundation to create a multi-modal learning program for children who lost months and even years of learning to strokes, so she recruited and worked with a neuroscientist from USC and the head of SCDFofCA's education program to create it. She also volunteers as a state chapter admin for Native Cry and mentors young adults who recently aged out of foster care.
Mickey is also one of a handful of taxonomers working in the US and has created two taxonomies for the purpose of training AI that sort data for retrieval, one in the education tech sector and another in the occupational security sector. Decades ago, in the last millenium, she was a baker, then pastry chef for both Arman Delorenz and Franklin Biggs (and contributed to two of Karen Young's Obsession cookbooks), then served as executive chef at The Ardenwood Historic Preserve and Heirloom Fine Catering, before becomming a large event manager; she was even the Head of Event Hospitality at the Sears Point Raceway for a few seasons (NASCAR and NHRA) before leaving to work as a single-subject classroom teacher.
Her first art show was a collection of paintings and mixed media photography at William Colburn's Iron-Age Gallery in 1996, since then her art has been shown on three continents. Working as a metal-smith, painter, graphic designer, print maker, animator, textile, multimedia and new media artist she continues to create fine art while also working as a graphic designer with organizations (like NCOA, PWT and NTVTWT) that help move the greater Indigenous community forward.
She has won an American Library of Poets Editor's Choice Award, as well as the Marcia Lewis Scholarship for American Craft as a fine-art metalsmith. Her volunteer work has included working as stage manager, choreographer and costumer for the California Children's Choir and she was also asked by the president of The California Sickle Cell Disease Foundation to create a multi-modal learning program for children who lost months and even years of learning to strokes, so she recruited and worked with a neuroscientist from USC and the head of SCDFofCA's education program to create it. She also volunteers as a state chapter admin for Native Cry and mentors young adults who recently aged out of foster care.
Mickey is also one of a handful of taxonomers working in the US and has created two taxonomies for the purpose of training AI that sort data for retrieval, one in the education tech sector and another in the occupational security sector. Decades ago, in the last millenium, she was a baker, then pastry chef for both Arman Delorenz and Franklin Biggs (and contributed to two of Karen Young's Obsession cookbooks), then served as executive chef at The Ardenwood Historic Preserve and Heirloom Fine Catering, before becomming a large event manager; she was even the Head of Event Hospitality at the Sears Point Raceway for a few seasons (NASCAR and NHRA) before leaving to work as a single-subject classroom teacher.