Teachers’ Lounge

Join RISD Museum and Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology staff to engage with best practices for teaching and learning about Native culture, history, and art. This program will focus on Native art, objects, and cultural belongings in museum collections from the RISD Museum and the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology.
Sháńdíín Brown is a Native American Art professional, jeweler, and citizen of the Navajo Nation. She currently works full-time as the Henry Luce Curatorial Fellow for Native American Art at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum and part-time as an art consultant for the Barnes Foundation as well as teacher's assistant (TA) for the Penn Museum. She is a graduate of Dartmouth College, where she earned her Bachelor of Arts majoring in Anthropology as well as Native American Studies and minoring in Environmental Studies. Previously she has held positions at the Heard Museum, Hood Museum of Art, IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, and School for Advanced Research Indian Arts Research Center.
Leah Hopkins is a citizen of the Narragansett Indian Tribe and is the new Community Engagement Specialist at the Museum. She is responsible for working collaboratively with Indigenous and Tribal communities, museums, and other institutions and Brown students and faculty to develop, implement and evaluate programming and education initiatives that best improve the visibility and promote the perspectives of Indigenous populations in New England. Leah holds a BA in Anthropology from the University of Rhode Island, and has a background in museum and tribal education that spans over 10 years, working at both the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center, the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah), and with other regional institutions, organizations and tribal communities. Leah has done and continues to do extensive work within the New England region to promote the visibility, histories, cultural complexities, and cultural continuity of the area’s Indigenous peoples.
Leah Burgin has worked at the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology as the Manager of Museum Education and Programs since 2017. Hailing from Cincinnati, Ohio, Leah's career has taken her to Michigan, Vermont, and Washington, DC., developing and implementing public interpretation and informal education programs for the National Park Service, the Smithsonian Institution, and the US Capitol Visitor Center, among other organizations. Working at the intersections of anthropological archaeology, museum studies, and Native American studies (BA, University of Michigan), as well as public humanities (MA, Brown University), she's committed to the collaborative work of decolonizing museums and passionate about the social justice potential of heritage education. 
Join fellow teachers of all subjects. Professional development certificate available. Held in-person at the RISD Museum.
Questions? Please contact mlefast@risd.edu.
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Image Credit: Tsitsistas/Suhtai (Cheyenne); Native North American, Moccasins, 1800s. Gift of Henry A. Greene.