Cecilia Marek

Cecilia Marek (she/her) is a Gender Studies PhD student at Arizona State University (ASU) and a Cotutelle PhD candidate in Critical Indigenous Studies at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. She is Diné (Navajo), Nimiipuu (Nez Perce), and Hopi. She grew up on the Nez Perce reservation in northern Idaho and in Flagstaff, Arizona. She has an interdisciplinary background including Bachelor of Science degrees in Applied Indigenous Studies and Political Science, and a Graduate Certificate in Ethnic Studies from Northern Arizona University. Cecilia earned a master’s degree in American Indian Studies – Indigenous Rights and Social Justice from ASU in 2020. She recently earned a master’s in Gender Studies at ASU. 

Her research interests include Indigenous feminisms, specifically Native feminisms situated in the United States, Indigenous women’s leadership in activism and resistance movements, and Indigenous resurgence and futurities. Her current research examines the entangled histories and ongoing impacts of Indigenous child removal policies in Arizona and New South Wales, Australia, with a focus on how Indigenous communities resist and reimagine child welfare through sovereignty, kinship, and advocacy. Grounded in Indigenous feminist and decolonial methodologies, her work foregrounds relational accountability and places Indigenous voices at the center of scholarship and policy critique.

She also looks at how Indigenous feminists use zine-making as a form of decolonial practice to share their stories and perspectives in their own words and ways. Cecilia’s work contributes to the larger goal of and discourse around full sovereignty and self-determination of Indigenous nations and incorporates the vital perspectives of Indigenous women into that broader conversation. She aims to empower Indigenous women and communities through a reclaiming of women's traditional cultural positions of leadership that have been diminished and/or erased through colonization and patriarchy.