Megan Baker
Assistant Professor
- megan.baker@northwestern.edu
- 847 467-4274
- 1812 Hinman Room 303
Megan Baker is a sociocultural anthropologist and tribal historian who specializes in Choctaw law and history and Southeastern US Indigenous material culture. Her research considers the intersections of Indigenous sovereignty, race, economy, and history of anthropology in North America with particular attention to the colonial transformation of land into private property. She teaches courses on settler colonialism, the history of Native nations and US anthropology, Indigenous critical theory, Native/Indigenous feminisms, and community-engaged anthropology. She is a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.
Baker’s work melds scholarly and community-facing research. Her current book project examines historical and anthropological disciplinary formation through the study of Oklahoma Choctaws, tracing how that knowledge production has informed and worked in tandem with US property laws to facilitate land dispossession and challenges to Indigenous sovereignty in today’s era of resurgent American Indian political-economic power. Her community-based projects include collaborating with fellow artists to revitalize rivercane basketry and pre-contact Choctaw textiles through collections and archaeological research. Her scholarship has been supported by the American Council of Learned Societies, Wenner-Gren Foundation, Cobell Scholarship, Native American and Indigenous Studies Association, American Anthropological Association, American Philosophical Society, Western History Collections, and others.
From 2019-2023, Baker served as a Cultural Research Associate for the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma’s Historic Preservation department. As part of the Community Outreach and Research program, she was an editor of "Iti Fabvssa," the Historic Preservation column in Choctaw Nation's Biskinik newspaper, the host of "Chahta Tosholi," a speaker series on Choctaw history and culture, and a researcher/consultant on government projects, community requests, NAGPRA repatriations, and collaborations with archives, museums and other institutions. A specialist in 19th and 20th-century Oklahoma Choctaw legal history, Baker authored a series in the Biskinik titled “A New Chahta Homeland: A History by the Decade,” which covers Oklahoma Choctaw history from 1830 to the 2000s. She has consulted on media projects with PBS Nova and exhibitions with the Choctaw Cultural Center, Gilcrease Museum, musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac, Bibliothèque municipal de Versailles, and others. She continues to collaborate with the department, assisting with consultations, repatriations, and community-based research projects.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Articles/book chapters
forthcoming “The Choctaw Advisory Council: The Myth of Disestablishment and Oklahoma Choctaw Governance, 1934-1948.” Chronicles of Oklahoma 104 (4).
2026 “Gender and Residential Water Use in Los Angeles: Ingrained, Untapped, and Porous.” With Jessica Cattelino, Kelsey Kim, Courtney Cecale, PwintPhyu Nandar, Dalila Ozier, Virdiana Auger-Velez, Ana Gonzalez, and Michael Kim. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space. https://doi.org/10.1177/
2026 “Native and Indigenous Feminisms in North America.” In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Gender and Women's History, edited by Amanda Capern. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/
2022 “I Do What I Do for the Language: Land and Choctaw Language and Cultural Revitalization.” In Allotment Stories: Indigenous Land Relations under Settler Siege, edited by Daniel Heath Justice and Jean O’Brien. University of Minnesota Press.
2022 “Museums & Renewed Diplomacy: Choctaw-French Relations of the 18th Century and Present.” With Jennifer Byram. Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archives Professionals 18 (1), 59-68. https://doi.org/10.1177/
Newspaper articles
2025 “Coal in Choctaw Nation, Part I,” Biskinik. January. https://www.choctawnation.com/
2023 “Makers and Masterpieces: Rivercane Basketry at the Smithsonian,” Biskinik, March. https://www.choctawnation.com/
2022 “Reuniting Makers and Masterpieces: Introduction,” Biskinik, December. https://www.choctawnation.com/
2023 “Community Collaboration and the Making of the ‘Bok Abaiya: Practiced Hands and the Arts of Choctaw Basketry’ Exhibit,” Biskinik, July. https://www.choctawnation.com/
2021 “A New Chahta Homeland: A History by the Decade, Series Introduction,” Biskinik, January. https://www.choctawnation.com/