Daniel R. Wildcat is a Yuchi member of the Muscogee Nation of Oklahoma. Dr. Wildcat received an interdisciplinary PhD from the University of Missouri at Kansas City, and his service as teacher and administrator at Haskell Indian Nations University spans thirty-seven years. He was the Gordon Russell visiting professor of Native American Studies at Dartmouth College in 2013. In 1994, he partnered with the Hazardous Substance Research Center at Kansas State University to create the Haskell Environmental Research Studies (HERS) Center and subsequently start the HERS summer undergraduate internship program with KU professor Dr. Joane Nagel. He is a noted speaker on Traditional Ecological Knowledges and has offered programs for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA, the American Geophysical Union, the Ecological Society of America, the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, and many scientific organizations and universities.
Dr. Wildcat is currently the principal investigator of a 20-million-dollar, five-year, NSF-funded project to develop the Rising Voices, Changing Coasts Research Hub at Haskell: a research hub where Indigenous knowledges will be intrinsic to climate science developed to understand climate change impacts on Indigenous coastal Peoples of the US and its territories.
He is the author and editor of several books: Power and Place: Indian Education in America, with Vine Deloria, Jr.; Destroying Dogma: Vine Deloria’s Legacy on Intellectual America, with Steve Pavlik; and Red Alert! Saving the Planet with Indigenous Knowledge. On Indigenuity: Learning the Lessons of Mother Earth explores Indigenous ingenuity—Indigenuity—and shares examples of its power in addressing the environmental crises of the Anthropocene. In addition, he is a co-author of the Southern Great Plains chapter of the Fourth National Climate Assessment.
