Brittani R. Orona, Ph.D.

Associate Professor
Email: [email protected] | Office: AL-321

Brittani R. Orona (Hupa, Hoopa Valley Tribe) received her Ph.D. in Native American Studies with a Designated Emphasis in Human Rights from University of California, Davis. Brittani earned her M.A. in Native American Studies from UC Davis, M.A. in Public History from Sacramento State University, and her B.A. in History from Cal Poly Humboldt (formerly Humboldt State University). Her research and teaching focus areas include Indigenous Human Rights, federal Indian Law, Environmental Justice (Indigenous and Native American), Tribal Water Rights, Traditional Ecological Knowledge (Place and Land based learning), Visual Sovereignty, California Indians (History and Politics), Decolonization, and Public History.

Her dissertation to manuscript project focuses on Indigenous environmental justice, visual sovereignty, and water rights on the Klamath River Basin in Northwestern California. The project addresses how environmental policy on the Klamath River Basin relies on narrow definitions of genocide, time, and settler-colonial concepts of ownership to continue Indigenous land dispossession in California. Hupa, Yurok, and Karuk artists and activists work beyond the scope of environmental policy to assert place-based epistemology through trans-Indigenous relationships against the state.

She received support and funding for her research from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, American Council for Learned Societies, Mellon Public Scholars Program, Robert and Patricia Switzer Foundation, and Incomindios, an international Indigenous rights organization. She has published in News from Native California, Humboldt Journal of Social Relations, KCET, Northwest Coast Regalia Stories Project, California History Journal (UC Press) with book chapters from the University of Utah Press and University of Arizona Press. She currently serves on the boards of Save California Salmon and California Association of Museums (CAM). Brittani is a member of Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA), California Indian Studies and Scholars Association (CISSA), Western History Association (WHA), and Native Women’s Collective. She previously held the 2021-2022 Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion, 2020 Incomindios-Lippuner Indigenous Human Rights, and the 2019-2020 Switzer Environmental fellowships.

Prior to joining SDSU, Brittani worked for several federal, local, and state government agencies including: California State Parks, Department of Toxic Substances Control, Government Operations Agency, State Indian Museum, the Office of Historic Preservation, California State Archives, National Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC, and the Maidu Museum and Historic Site.