Join the McClung Museum, the Department of Theatre, and the Appalachian Justice Research Center for an illuminating and timely panel with RaeLynn Butler, Starr Hardridge, and Mary Kathryn Nagle. Together, they will explore Native Nation sovereignty, legal advocacy, cultural continuity, and the ongoing pursuit of human rights inviting audiences to engage with these vital and enduring issues.

Enjoy a light reception beginning at 5:00 p.m., followed by the discussion at 6:00 p.m.

This program accompanies the exhibition Homelands: Connecting to Mounds through Native Art, now on view at the McClung Museum. Support for Homelands is generously provided by the Henry Luce Foundation and the Terra Foundation for American Art. Educational programming for the museum has been provided by the Knox County Tourism Consortium.

About the Speakers

RaeLynn A. Butler is a citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and serves as the Secretary of Culture and Humanities at the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. She oversees the tribe’s efforts to promote, protect, and preserve Mvskoke and Euchee language, culture, history, arts, and cultural resources. She served as the manager of the Historic and Cultural Preservation Department for eight years and has extensive experience with repatriation and sacred lands protection. RaeLynn earned a Master of Science degree in Botany and Plant Pathology from Purdue University and a Bachelor of Science degree in Environmental Science from Haskell Indian Nations University.

Starr Hardridge was born in Texas in 1974 and raised throughout Oklahoma. He is of Muscogee (Creek) and European ancestry and is a descendant of the Tuskegee tribal town. His work employs an assemblage of pointillist colored dots to evoke the texture and rhythm of a beaded surface. Schooled in the traditional disciplines of painting, Hardridge’s style continues to evolve through an abstract symbolism influenced by the search for balance within the natural world. His bold use of color and geometry reflects a modern interpretation of Muscogee pattern and design. Hardridge’s work is included in the permanent collections of The Philbrook Museum of Art, The Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, The National Museum of Wildlife Art, and The Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art. He is currently represented by Blue Rain Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Exhibit C Gallery in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Mary Kathryn Nagle is an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation. She is an attorney whose work focuses on the restoration of tribal sovereignty and the inherent right of Indian Nations to protect their women and children from domestic violence and sexual assault. From 2015 to 2019, she served as the first Executive Director of the Yale Indigenous Performing Arts Program. Nagle is an alum of the 2013 Public Theater Emerging Writers Program. She has received commissions from Arena Stage, the Rose Theater (Omaha, Nebraska), Portland Center Stage, Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Yale Repertory Theatre, Round House Theater, Oregon Shakespeare Theater, and the Kansas City Repertory Theatre. She also works in film and television. Most recently she served as an Associate Producer on the film PREY and a writer on the Netflix series ABANDONS. She is most well known for her work on ending violence against Native women. Her play Sliver of a Full Moon has been performed in law schools from Stanford to Harvard, NYU and Yale. She has worked extensively on Violence Against Women Act re-authorization, and she has filed numerous briefs in the United States Supreme Court, as a part of the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center’s VAWA Sovereignty Initiative, including most recently, Denezpi v. United States, United States v. Cooley, Oklahoma v. Murphy, Oklahoma v. McGirt, Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta, Brackeen v. Haaland, and United States v. Rahimi. She represents numerous families of Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls, including Kaysera Stops Pretty Places’ family who have brought a public campaign demanding an investigation into her murder. More can be read here: www.justiceforkaysera.org. In 2025, she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 
 

Note that Jonodev Chaudhuri will no longer be able to partcipate in the panel due to extenuating circumstances.