BIOGRAPHY
Shannon Martin is an enrolled citizen of the Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band of Pottawatomi Indians (Gun Lake Tribe), apart of the Lynx clan, and a descendant of the Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe, and serves as the Executive Director/Founder of Cultural Pathways Group, LLC, a company that supports the development of cultural activation/preservation initiatives, community-centered organizing, exhibition research/development, NAGPRA repatriation efficacy, and strategic planning for Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities and institutions. Her clients include the Association on American Indian Affairs, Grand Rapids Public Museum, Kalamazoo Nature Center, Michigan History Center, Mukurtu (Washington State University), and New York Times best-selling author Angeline Boulley as a Subject Matter Expert on her forthcoming second novel “Warrior Girl Unearthed” (May 2023). Shannon is the former Director of the Ziibiwing Center of Anishinabe Culture & Lifeways (Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe of Michigan) – dedicating over 19 years to the award-winning cultural center and Tribal museum.
Additional information:
Since birth, she has participated in ancestral repatriations, pow-wows, treaty demonstrations, ceremonies, and other cultural and language events. She is a member of the Three Fires Midewiwin Society (original Anishinabe way of life). Shannon was a Guardian of Culture and Lifeways International Leadership Awardee at the 2018 International Conference of Indigenous Archives, Libraries, and Museums. She was selected and invited to participate in the Americans for Indian Opportunity (AIO) Ambassadors Program. Shannon was further recognized as the Ford Foundation Fellow for the 2006-2007 class of Ambassadors at a Washington, D.C. gala in September 2006. TShannon and her fellow ambassadors went to Bolivia, met with Indigenous activists and leaders – including Presidente Evo Morales Ayma.
Shannon has served on the national boards for the D’Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies at the Newberry Library, Honor the Earth, and the Research Advisory Council for the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition.
