My research focuses on aesthetic and formal innovations in 20th and 21st century California Native literatures and arts. My dissertation asserts that Native California--including its considerable Pacific coastline which it shares with Pacific Indigenous peoples--is a site of rich and robust literary and artistic production, that California Native writers and artists are expanding understandings of relational Indigenous aesthetics, and that their works create generative trans-Indigenous connections across American Indian and Pacific Indigenous communities. 

Additionally, I am interested in surfing in Indigenous communities. In this work I examine how Indigenous peoples use sports and outdoor recreation activities to reclaim a visible presence in homelands and home waters, as well as how stories connect craft, communities, and places. This work grew out of my own identity as a surfer; I found myself constantly wondering whose waters I was in, and this wondering has revealed rich stories and vibrant expressions of Indigenous sovereignty and relations.