Sierra Mondragón (She/Her)

Sierra Mondragón is a second year PhD student from Northern New Mexico. She is of mixed Pueblo, Chicanx, and Anglo descent and her family are enrolled citizens of Nambé Pueblo. Sierra's research focuses on Southwest Indigenous women's historical narratives, specifically Pueblo women's history and activism as well as the overarching theme of Indigenous Belonging. She is developing a dissertation project on how Pueblo women have always and continue to actively shape, practice, imagine, and historicize what it means to them to be Pueblo women. Sierra is combining existing Pueblo women's oral histories with her own series of oral history interviews and contextualizing them within broader currents of 20th century U.S., New Mexican, and Indigenous histories. Supplementing historical contexts and archives with Pueblo storytelling, art, memoir, and biography, Sierra's project is also employing an interdisciplinary lens. This project prioritizes lived experience, activism, and how Pueblo women have historically and continuously mobilized in unique and culturally specific ways to confront ongoing colonial violence. This project seeks to explore how Pueblo women navigate the overlaps and tensions of sovereignty, identity, race, gender, and empire.

Sierra is a recent recipient of the 2023 Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship.