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Jennifer Shannon, associate professor of anthropology and curator at the CU Museum of Natural History, has won a Whiting Public Engagement Program fellowship, a major grant for her work chronicling Indigenous history in comic books.

The $50,000 fellowship will support Kumeyaay Comics: Indigenous Histories of California, a project that builds on the success of Shannon’s NAGPRA Comics.

The aim of NAGPRA Comics, which was launched in 2017 with archaeologist Sonya Atalay (Anishinaabe-Ojibwe) and archaeologist and comics creator John Swogger, is to tell true stories about repatriation from Native nations’ perspectives.

Taking its name from the federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) of 1990, the series helps Native peoples, museum professionals, university students and others understand both the obligations and impact of the legislation, Shannon said.