This is the second of a five-part series. Part 1 is here.
Katie Ackley
Katie Ackley is an enrolled member of the Oneida Nation through her mother and is also Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa through her father. She serves as the club advisor for the Native American Student Association and as a Student Engagement Specialist in the Division of Organizational Impact & Culture at Madison College. She organizes cultural programming, including the college’s Annual Spring Pow Wow, which she has helped grow over the years into one of the most prominent intertribal pow wows in southern Wisconsin, drawing more than a thousand attendees each year. In 2024, she co-curated Indigenous Wisconsin: A Story of Resistance, an art exhibit at Madison College featuring works by 18 Native artists representing 11 of Wisconsin’s 12 tribal nations, alongside colleagues Nicole Soulier and Micaela Salas.
Previously, she worked in Student Life at Madison College; served as an Inclusion Facilitator, Respite Provider, and Support Specialist with United Cerebral Palsy of Dane County and coordinated Youth Recreational Programming through the Atwood (Goodman) Community Center. She earned a degree in social welfare from UW–Madison.
Sherman Funmaker
Sherman Funmaker is a poet, essayist, and speaker, and an enrolled member of the Ho-Chunk Nation from Baraboo. He is a Bear Clan elder and the grandson of Xéhachiwinga (Mountain Wolf Woman), the renowned Ho-Chunk storyteller and autobiographer. His debut book, Bear Tracks: Memories of a Ho-Chunk Elder, was published by the Wisconsin Historical Society Press in February 2026. The collection of poems and short essays draws on his upbringing in the Wisconsin Dells area in the 1950s and ’60s as one of 11 children. He didn’t begin writing until age 52, when he took a creative writing class at UW-Baraboo. After graduating, he began coaching and collaborating with other writers and presenting storytelling workshops for high school students and adults. He also runs Funmaker Custom Clothing, a design line, and has been a musician since his teenage years. He lives in Wisconsin Dells.
Dr. Lauren W. Yowelunh McLester-Davis
Dr. Lauren W. Yowelunh McLester-Davis is a Research Fellow in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and on the advisory council for the Native American Center for Health Professions. She is also an administrative coordinator for the Center for Indigenous Health at the University of Washington and on the planning committee for the U.S. Indigenous Data Sovereignty Summit. She previously completed a fellowship in Indigenous Data Sovereignty and Ethics at the University of Arizona-Tucson and served on the Board of Directors for the Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics & Native Americans in Science. She graduated from Lawrence University in Appleton in 2018, from Tulane University in 2023 with her Ph.D., and from Johns Hopkins University in 2024 with a graduate certificate in American Indian Public Health.
Dr. Jeneile Luebke
Dr. Jeneile Luebke is an assistant professor in the School of Nursing at UW-Madison and an enrolled member of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians. Her research focuses on gender-based violence in the lives of Indigenous women, using community-engaged and Indigenous-specific research methodologies. She is a co-director of the Center for Indigenous Research to Create Learning and Excellence (CIRCLE), a mentorship program for Indigenous graduate students supported by a National Science Foundation grant of approximately $1 million over four years. She leads the annual Native Nations Nursing, Helpers, and Healers Summit and serves on Wisconsin’s Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Task Force. She holds affiliate appointments with the American Indian Studies program and the campus Sexual Violence Research Initiative. In 2020, her research team received a $2 million Department of Justice grant, Tracking our Truth, to expand culturally relevant medical forensic care options for American Indian women in Wisconsin after experiences of sexual violence. She was an Anna Julia Cooper postdoctoral fellow at UW-Madison from 2020 to 2022. She received an Outstanding Woman of Color award in 2025. She earned a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in nursing at UW-Madison and a PhD at UW-Milwaukee.
Tara Tindall
Tara Tindall, an enrolled member of the Ho-Chunk Nation, is the Native American teacher leader for the Madison Metropolitan School District, where she oversees the Native American Education Program and the federal Title VI program serving Native students from pre-K through 12th grade. She provides professional development for teaching staff on Native curriculum under Wisconsin Act 31, which sets requirements around Native American history, culture, and tribal sovereignty. She also supports the Title VI Parent Advisory Committee and tutoring program for Native students, facilitates access to the American Indian Science and Engineering Society, and advises Native American Student Association groups in MMSD high schools. She grew up in Black River Falls and has spent multiple decades in education. She holds a bachelor’s degree in history from UW-Stevens Point and a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction from UW-Madison.
Part 3 coming tomorrow!
