For Native American Heritage Month, We Recognize Dr. Carolyn Dunn

The Native American Indigenous Peoples Caucus (NAIPC) is celebrating Native American Heritage month by recognizing a few of our members. This week I would like to introduce Dr. Carolyn Dunn. 

Carolyn M. Dunn, MFA, PhD, is an Indigenous poet, playwright, scholar, and musician of Cherokee, Muscogee Creek, Seminole, Choctaw Freedman, Tunica-Biloxi, Atakapas-Ishak, and French Creole descent. She is the author of the award-winning poetry collection Outfoxing Coyote and Echolocation: Poems, Stories and Songs from Indian Country L.A., and co-editor of several anthologies of Indigenous literature and performance. Her plays, including The Frybread Queen and Soledad, have been produced in Los Angeles and New York.  

Her current work includes Coyote Woman, commissioned by Rising Youth Theatre as part of the BIPOC Playwrights Superhero project; Uk hile’t: Shell Sisters, a two woman play about Dr. Dunn’s Ancestors, Cecilia and Charlotte India Libre; and The Chat Rats Trilogy with Emmy-award winning writer Mary Sue Price; and Decentered Dramaturgies: Indigenous Performance and Place. Dr. Dunn is Associate Professor of Theatre and Dance and Director of Playwriting and Dramaturgy at California State University, Los Angeles. 

Dr. Dunn is an active NAIPC member who brings our attention to the needs of our community, such as Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, through her creative and artistic work.  

I had an opportunity to see Carolyn perform in the play, Four Women in Red. I was moved by her performance and dedication to her artistry which brings to the audience the issues of gendered and racialized nature of violent crimes. Carolyn is an inspiration to us all. 

By: Sandy Kewanhaptewa-Dixon, CFA NAIPC co-chair and CSU Pomona professor