Personal Summary

Heather Cahoon, PhD, MFA, is an award-winning poet and scholar of federal Indian policy. She is the author of two poetry collections, Elk Thirst, and Horsefly Dress, which was published as part of the University of Arizona Press’s distinguished Sun Tracks American Indian literary series. Her poems have appeared in prominent national and international publications including the seminal W.W. Norton & Co. anthology of Native American poetry, When the Light of the Sun Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through, as well as in Poet Lore, America’s oldest poetry journal, Yellow Medicine Review, a highly-regarded international journal of Indigenous literature, art and thought, and in American Poets: The Journal of the Academy of American Poets. Her poems have also appeared in notable non-print publications like the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series and Literary Hub, among others. Heather was also one of forty-seven poets from across America selected for inclusion in past-U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo’s signature project, “Living Nations, Living Words: A Map of First People’s Poetry” for the Library of Congress’s permanent collection. Poems comprising this project were published in Living Nations, Living Words: An Anthology of First Peoples Poetry. She has read and discussed her poetry on well-known radio shows such as The Write Question and The Poetry Moment and in written interviews appearing in Poetry Northwest, Carve, and CutBank. She has served as a judge for a variety of poetry prizes, as well as various contests including the Montana State Poet Laureate competition and the Montana Arts Council’s Artist Innovation awards. To support her writing, Heather has received a Potlatch Fund Native Arts grant, a Merriam Frontier Prize, and two Montana Arts Council Artist/Writer grants.

Heather is also the founder of UM’s American Indian Governance and Policy Institute (AIGPI), for which she served as the inaugural Director and later Co-Director until August 2023. AIGPI brings the Montana University System’s research and service resources to work with tribes in Montana to address the core causes of socioeconomic challenges and health related issues on reservations by providing the necessary support for evidence-informed tribal policymaking. Recognizing that many tribal government officials lack access to the type of policy research and analysis services supplied to state and federal policymakers, AIGPI fills this void by providing tribal leaders with credible, in-depth research and analysis of tribal-level policies. This collaborative, data-backed approach aims to enhance tribal governing structures by increasing effective functioning, regulatory authority and self-governing abilities, and further tribal leaders’ efforts to strengthen their economies while building individual and community health and prosperity. Likewise, these analyses also help educate local, state and federal policymakers and the broader public on an array of complex policy matters relating to American Indians that have real quality of life implications on reservations across the country. A secondary goal is, through an active learning environment, for tribal community members and student leaders to gain a comprehensive understanding of the tribal policymaking process, how various levels of policy interact, and how outdated, unresponsive and harmful public policies can be reengineered to encourage systems that support socioeconomic health and tribal sovereignty. To further aid in this effort and to help guide policy research and developments, she developed an Indian country-specific social determinants of health framework. Heather's work in these areas was supported by grants from the Montana Healthcare Foundation, Headwaters Foundation, and Mirador Foundation.

In 2015, Heather was named UM’s first Elouise Cobell Land and Culture Institute Scholar, a title reserved for faculty who are continuing Elouise Cobell’s legacy of working for justice and equity for American Indians and tribal communities. She has also served as a Gubernotorial appoinment to the Montana Board of Crime Control's Youth Justice Council and the Montana Ambassadors. Heather grew up on the Flathead Indian Reservation and is a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes with Upper Kalispel, Nez Perce, Spokane, Kootenai, Chippewa and western European lineages. 

Education

Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Studies (History, Anthropology & Native American Studies), University of Montana (2005)

M.F.A. in Poetry, University of Montana (2001)

 

Courses Taught

NASX 235, "Oral and Written Traditions of Native Americans" (regularly)

NASX 304, "Native American Beliefs and Philosophy" (regularly)

NASX 354, "Indians of Montana Since the Reservation Era" (periodically)

NASX 479/579, "Tribal Governance and Policymaking" (periodically)

 

 

 

 

 

Research Interests

Tribal sovereignty and reservation socioeconomic health, Indigenous governments/governing structures and policy, individual tribal member social and civil justice issues, American Indian beliefs and philosophy, American Indian poetry and literary expression including oral traditions

Projects

FUTURE PROJECTS: Advancing American Indian/Alaska Native Health Equity: A New Social Determinants of Health Framework for Indian Country - In 2020, I received a grant from the Montana Healthcare Foundation (MHCF) that enabled me to conduct extensive research on the array of so-called social determinants of health (SDOH) that uniquely influence American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) health; this work included an international literature review with particular attention paid to research by AI/AN and other Indigenous scholars. From 2021-23, with the continued assistance of the MHCF as well as the Headwaters Foundation, I produced a lengthy report that synthesized this research and culminated in my development of an Indian country-specific SDOH theoretical framework for improving AI/AN health outcomes through policy development across numerous social domains. This framework and its undergirding research have received attention from people working in public and tribal health across Montana, now guiding the work of the American Indian Governance and Policy Institute and informing the current Montana State Health Improvement Plan. The realization that my work was rapidly beginning to fill a significant void led me to consider ways I might further its reach and impact and am thus working on a plan for seucring both the time and funding to transition my 126-page policy report into a 250-page scholarly book manuscript for publication with the University of Nebraska Press. My goal is to produce a book that illuminates, breaks down, and offers recommendations for meaningfully engaging this complex subject matter—a book that can be used both inside and outside of colleges to educate a vast number of current and future policy makers and health and community leaders across the country and inform their decisions in ways that advance health equity for AI/AN for generations to come. 

CURRENT PROJECTS: Naɫisqélixʷ - This manuscript engages Indigenous epistemologies or ways of knowing, within which—as Gregory Cajete, a Tewa educator and Humanities scholar, writes—an individual “gains knowledge from firsthand experience in the world and then transmits or explores it through ritual, ceremony, art, and appropriate technology.” My project embodies this and is a creative scholarship piece that uses storytelling and personal reflection to engage core structures of Salish-Kalispel worldview in order to deal with chronic pain and to help me redefine my relationship to it in physical and well as metaphysical terms. This project also utilizes Indigenous research methodologies or inquiry techniques through which I accessed knowledge from Elders and my tribe’s oral traditions, especially our sacred stories of the creation and transformation of the world that led me to engage in an array of culturally-specified healing approaches, amongst many others. The title of my manuscript, “Naɫisqélixʷ” (which translates from Salish into English as “people-eating monsters”), comes from our Coyote stories because, just as these entities posed grave threats to humans in the primordial past, they continue to do so today but now they can take the form of addiction, self-doubt, or—in my case—chronic pain. I started working on this manuscript nearly two years ago and have been slowly working on it as I can find the time and funding. At this point, all of the research is done and I only need to write it. Last year, a grant from the Montana Arts Council enabled me to begin writing in earnest and a subaward from the Mellon Foundation will allow me to resume working on it again this summer. 

American Indian Governance and Policy Institute - I developed the concept for AIGPI while working as the State-Tribal Policy Analyst at the Montana Budget and Policy Center, which work brought me into tribal council chambers, tribal college presidents’ offices, and meetings with tribal and urban Indian health leaders across the state. During this period, I was often asked by tribal policy makers about particular policies other tribes may have developed that could be used as a template for everything from in-taking outside grant funding for suicide prevention to ideas for economic development specific to state tourism initiatives to policies related to the internal workings of particular tribal government departments. Through these inquiries, I realized that this unmet need was an opportunity to figure out how to provide these critical policy research and analysis services to tribal governments free of cost, which meant likely tapping into existing resources and capacity. When the opportunity arose for me to join the NAS faculty at UM, I knew this was my chance and I began mapping out the structure and functioning of AIGPI. I designed AIGPI to work collaboratively with tribal governments to conduct research by drawing upon the extensive expertise, research and service capacity present across the entire Montana University System through a network of affiliated faculty, MUS students including those in UM's nationally recognized Indian Law Clinic, and other research centers. (In the future, tribal college students will have the opportunity to engage in research for their communities via AIGPI's Summer Research Intership, which program is still in-development and will be funded by an endowed account held at the UM Foundation started with generous donations from Clearwater Credit Union and the Mirador Founation.) Once the requisite partnerships and on-campus approvals were in place, I submitted my proposal to the Montana Board of Regents along with letters of support from the Rocky Mountain Tribal Leaders Council and the Director of Indian Affairs for Montana. In March 2020, the Board of Regents approved my proposal. Funding from the Headwaters Foundation, Montana Healthcare Foundation, and Mirador Foundation helped make this work possible.

AIGPI in the News

UM Creates Native Think Tank, Policy Institute for Montana Tribes

University of Montana launches tribal policy institute

'Becoming a forefront’ in Indian Country

Clearwater Helps Establish Student Scholarship Fund for UM’s AIGPI

Horsefly Dress: Poems - I wrote the poems comprising Horsefly Dress from 2016-2019 and it was published as part of the University of Arizona's distinguished Sun Tracks American Indian Literary series and released in August 2020 into the locked-down world of a global pandemic. Horsefly Dress is named after Coyote's daughter and is a meditation on the experience and beauty of suffering. The poems recount traditional Séliš and Qĺispé stories and confront Coyote’s transformation of the world, including his decision to leave present certain evils such as cruelty, greed, hunger, and death. Rich in the imagery of autumnal foliage, migrating birds, and frozen landscapes, Horsefly Dress calls forth the sensory experience of grief and transformation. As the stories and poems reveal, the transformative powers associated with the human experience of loss belong to the past, present, and future, as do the traditional Salish-Pend d’Oreille stories that create the backbone of this intricate collection. An Artist Innovation Award from the Montana Arts Council enabled me to begin writing Horsefly Dress.

Horsefly Dress in the News

"Inspired By Heather Cahoon’s Poetry, Glacier Symphony Performance to Feature Original Composition." Flathead Beacon

Orion Magazine editor Camille Dungy recommends Horsefly Dress for Native American Heritage Month reading, calling it “thrilling, necessary, revolutionary, and right.” 

The Los Angeles Public Library lists Horsefly Dress as recommended reading by Native American authors

David Starkey calls Horsefly Dress “Concise yet evocative...a marvel and a delight” in a review for the California Review of Books

Indigenous Cultures Institute recommends Horsefly Dress as one of five “must-read” books by Native American authors

“All That’s Wrapped into a Name: A Conversation with Heather Cahoon.” Poetry Northwest

Horsefly Dress was included in Ms. Magazine’s “2021 Poetry for the rest of Us” by Karla Strand 

“Lessons in Transformation: A Conversation with Heather Cahoon.” Cutbank Literary Journal 93, University of Montana, 1 December 2020.

Essential Understandings Regarding Montana Indians - In 2018, the Montana Office Public Instruction's Indian Education Division asked me to help update the cornerstone resource for implementation of the Montana law known as Indian Education for All--the "Essential Understandigns Regarding Montana Indians," which was originally developed in 1999. This work entailed synthesizing comments and input received from tribal leaders and educators across the state during the overall revision process and then providing additional context and background information, much of which I excerpted directly from my own research including my PhD dissertation. The review process also included members of the Montana Advisory Council for Indian Education. In the end, the Essential Understandings were expanded from eight to 30 pages and are available here.

Selected Publications

Poetry Books

Naɫisqélixʷ: People Eating Monsters (in progress).

Horsefly Dress. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 2020.

Poetry Chapbooks

Elk Thirst. Missoula, MT: University of Montana Merriam-Frontier Award for publication, 2005. 

Poems

“counter balance,” “the shallow v-shape” and “getting firewood.” Poetry Northwest. Vol. XVI, Iss. 2, Winter & Spring, 2022.

“Scƛ’lil,” “Render,” “A Movement of Memory in Two Parts,” “Rilke, Screech Owl and Night Loons,” “The Hawk Who Wears an Owl’s Face.” Poetry Northwest online. Native Poets Torchlight Series, ed. Jennifer Foerster, January 12, 2022.

“Baby Out of Cut-Open Woman.” American Poets: The Journal of the Academy of American Poets, Vol. 60, Spring-Summer 2021.

“Rescue” and “Łx̣ʷɫó Spq’niʔs.” Poetry Northwest. Winter & Spring, 2020.  

“From Trees.” Poet Lore. Vol. 114, No. 3/4, Fall/Winter, 2019.

“Sharp.” Burnside Review. Vol. 15, No. 1, 2019.

"Łčíčšeʔ." Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, November 5, 2019.

“Meditations on Blue,” “To Forge Meaning” and “Unéxʷ.” Yellow Medicine Review: A Journal of Indigenous Literature, Art & Thought, guest edited by Angela Trudell Vasquez and Mellissa Kingbird. Spring, 2019.

“The Origin of Death,” “Perilous” and “Orb Weavers.” South Dakota Review, Vol. 54, Nos. 3 and 4 (2019).

“Peregrine,” “Shelter” and “Ode to Pulia.” American Indian Culture and Research Journal, 42:1 (2018).

“Baby Out of Cut Open Woman,” “Č̓atnaɫqs,” “Remnant Naɫisqélixʷtn,” “Dream Series in Three Parts” (“A Dream of Crows,” “A Dream of Wolves,” “A Dream of a Darling Boy”). basalt, Vol. 12, no. 2, 2018.

“Coyote and the Cross” and “Meta.”basalt online, September 19, 2018.

“Rebirth and the Almost Moon” and “Nunxʷé.” LitHub, August 15, 2018.

“Horsefly Dress.” Camas: The Nature of the West. University of Montana, Summer 2018.

“Death as a Lens.” Carve Magazine, Summer 2018.

“WASP” and "Moth Series in Four Parts." Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts, 23, Spring 2018.

“A Recurring Dream” and “The Salish Root Word for Water.” Hanging Loose, Spring 2018.

“Red OsierSpiders.” Verde Que Te Quiero: Poems after Federico Garcia Lorca, edited by Natalie Peeterse. Open Country Press, 2017.

“Red Osier Spiders.” Southern Humanities Review online. 

Anthologized Poems

“Baby Out of Cut-Open Woman.” Living Nations, Living Words: An Anthology of First Peoples Poetry, W.W. Norton & Co., 2021. 

"Blonde." In When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through, edited by Joy Harjo, LeAnne Howe and Jennifer Foerster. W.W. Norton, 2020.

“Escape Routes” and “Magpies” (published as “Revision”). Bright Bones: Contemporary Montana Writing, edited by Natalie Peeterse. Open Country Press, 2018.

“Méstm̓/Lˀéw” and “Geography of Coyote.” Poems Across the Big Sky II. Many Voices Press, 2016. 

"Blonde," "Elk Thirst," and "Missions." Birthright: Born to Poetry: A Collection of Montana Indian Poetry, Montana Office of Public Instruction Indian, 2012.

Research

Advancing American Indian/Alaska Native Health Equity: A New Social Determinants of Health Framework for Indian Country (in progress).

“Key Social Factors Influencing American Indian/Alaska Native Health in Indian Country.” (Report to the Montana Healthcare Foundation)

"Revenue Competitions Between Sovereigns: State and Tribal Taxation in Montana." American Indian Culture and Research Journal 42:1 (2018).

"Medicaid Expansion in Indian Country: Improving the Health of Individuals and Communities." Montana Budget and Policy Center, November 1, 2018.

"Breaking the Cycle: Reducing Recidivism by Improving Defense and Reentry Systems." Montana Budget and Policy Center, October 1, 2018.

“Jurisdiction, Justice Systems, and American Indians in Montana.” Montana Budget and Policy Center, August 1, 2018.

“Criminal Justice Reinvestment in Montana: Improving Outcomes for American Indians.” Montana Budget and Policy Center, July 5, 2018.

"Policy Basics: Taxes in Indian Country: Part 2 - Tribal Governments." Montana Budget and Policy Center, November 1, 2017.

"Policy Basics: Taxes in Indian Country: Part 1- Individual Tribal Members." Montana Budget and Policy Center, July 1, 2017.

“Tourism Could Be an Economic Driver in Indian Country with Focus and Investment.” Montana Budget and Policy Center, March 22, 2017.

“Medicaid Expansion in Indian Country: Effective Strategies for Outreach and Enrollment.” Montana Budget and Policy Center, September 16, 2017.

Notable Contributions to Publications

"Essential Understandings Regarding Montana Indians" 2019 revised edition. Montana Office of Public Instruction Indian Education Division, 2019.

Other

“Baby Out of Cut-Open Woman.” Living Nations, Living Words: A Map of First Peoples Poetry, U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo's 2021 signature project for the Library of Congress's permanent collection.

“Dear Forced North.” From Indian Country Conversations – Love Letters to the MAM (Missoula Art Museum), basalt, Vol. 15, No. 1, 2021.  

"Love letter from Heather Cahoon to Molly Murphy Adams (Oglala, Lakota), Forced North, beadwork and ribbon on hand dyed wool, 2008, 54 x 40”." Missoula Art Museum Contemporary American Indian Art Collection, purchased in part with a gift from John Fletcher, 2008.09.

“Devolution: Another Reason Tribes and States Should Work Together.” Montana Budget and Policy Center, January 10, 2017.  Blog.

"MBPC's Montana Indian Country Index." Montana Budget and Policy Center, August 29, 2016. Blog.

Seliš Sm̓im̓iʔ 2: A Beginning Course in Salish & Pend d’ Oreille Dialect, Stories 1-16 by Heather Cahoon. Trans. Pat Pierre. Illus. Alyssa Nenemay. Flathead Reservation, MT: Salish-Pend d’ Oreille Culture Committee, Salish Kootenai College, The Salish Institute and Nk̓ʷusm, 2016.

Seliš Sm̓im̓iʔ 1: A Beginning Course in Salish & Pend d’ Oreille Dialect, Stories 1-16 by Heather Cahoon. Trans. Pat Pierre. Illus. Alyssa Nenemay. Flathead Reservation, MT: Salish-Pend d’ Oreille Culture Committee, Salish Kootenai College, The Salish Institute and Nk̓ʷusm, 2012. 

“Heather Cahoon on Landscape and Salish-Pend d’ Oreille Culture.” Reflections West. Montana Public Radio. 2012, Episode 32. Radio.

Affiliations

Member, Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes

Member, National Congress of American Indians

Member, Academy of American Poets