Travis Armstrong

Archaeology

Boozhoo. Travis Armstrong, an anthropology PhD student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has extensive experience as a Southern California archaeologist and is on the Register of Professional Archaeologists.

Travis is examining the cultural continuity of pre-contact and post-contact locations for harvesting and processing wild rice on the Leech Lake Reservation in Minnesota to tell the story of the people and landscape. He is engaging Tribal youth in the practice of anthropological archaeology and its critiques, to connect the past and the present. He previously studied a 2,000-year-old wild ricing site with the Bois Forte Band of Chippewa and the Superior National Forest. He created the archaeological fictional tale of “The Breeze That Took Her Beads” to tell the story of Mashkawizi, a girl from the early 1900s who lost her beads and her lifelong relationship to this traditional cultural place. Travis publishes the chiefbuffalo.com website on 1800s history of the Apostle Islands in Wisconsin. He is forming the Anishinaabe Aki Public Archaeology Network, akiarc.com.

Travis has worked to increase representation of enrolled members of federally recognized Tribes in anthropology. He was Curator of Native American Cultures at UCLA where he also oversaw the UCLA archaeological collections and NAGPRA for the Vice Chancellor of Research. He was a fire-line-trained regional archaeologist for San Diego County and the Eastern Sierras and a senior environmental scientist working on NAGPRA for CAL FIRE, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. He also worked for the National Geographic Society.

He has worked for the Cahuilla, Serrano and Chumash people for four California Tribal governments including serving as a Tribal Historic Preservation Officer, Tribal archaeologist and Native American monitor. He wrote the Tribal leadership story for the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla from creation times to the present. He is a past president of the San Diego County Archaeological Society where he heads the Native American Engagement and Collaboration Committee. He is on the Board of Trustees of the San Diego Archaeological Center, a federal repository, where he helped lead the effort to bring five California Native Americans to its board.

Travis has a JD from the UCLA School of Law, MA in cultural anthropology from Temple University in Philadelphia, MA in applied archaeology from Cal State University, San Bernardino, and an undergraduate degree from the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. He has a Working in Contemporary Native Nations certificate from UCLA. He attended field school under the late Daniel McCarthy in the Santa Rosa Mountains in Southern California.

Travis has held numerous positions for the Society for American Archaeology. He is on the Committee on Native American Relations, Native American Scholarship Committee, and Committee on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Justice. He is chair of the SAA Community Engaged Heritage Practices Interest Group. He previously was chair of the SAA Curation Interest Group and served on the Museum, Collections and Curation Committee.

He is the secretary/treasurer of the Register of Professional Archaeologists.

He is vice president and Ethics and Membership Committee chair of the Council for Minnesota Archaeology. He was the Legislative Committee chair of the Society for Hawaiian Archaeology.

Travis is an enrolled member of the Leech Lake Reservation Band of Ojibwe of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe. He also is a direct lineal descendant of the White Earth Reservation Band in Minnesota, where much of his family also lives, and two Lake Superior Bands of Wisconsin Chippewa. He is from the Loon clan, an Anishinaabe.

Chi-Miigwetch for reading.