Kelsey John
Assistant Professor
Native American and Indigenous Studies

Office Location:Ketchum 164

Pronouns: she / her / hers

Education

Ph.D., Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York - Cultural Foundations of Education, 2019
M.S., Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York - Cultural Foundations of Education, 2017
C.A.S., Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York - Women’s and Gender Studies, 2016
B.A., Colgate University, Hamilton, New York - Educational Studies, 2013

Research Interests

Indigenous methodologies, human-animal interaction, equine assisted services, Indigenous feminisms, Indigenous and Native American Studies, multispecies ethnography

Professional Affiliations



Kelsey Dayle John (Diné) is a member of the Navajo Nation and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Ethnic Studies. She studies interspecies learning in tribal communities, with a focus on equine-human interactions and Native American horse cultures/histories. She finds her theoretical locations within BIPOC feminisms, Indigenous studies, human-animal interaction, Diné Studies, and foundations of education. Previously, Kelsey taught in the Diné Studies department at Navajo Technical University on Navajo Nation and the Gender and Women's Studies and American Indian Studies departments at the University of Arizona. Kelsey is the founder and organizer of Horses Connecting Communities, a learning community that supports horse education on the Navajo Nation.


Selected Publications

Peer Reviewed Book Chapters

John, K.D. (2024). ‘When I run I’m not half, I’m Diné: The pluriverse in connectedness of movement. In Romeo Garcia, Ellen Cushman, Damian Baca (Eds.), Literacies of/from the Pluriverse: Tools for Perseverance and Livable Futures.

John, K.D. & +Shieldcheif, M. (2023). Wild: An American Indian historical analysis. In B. Minteer & H.W. Greene (Eds.), A Wilder Kingdom: Rethinking the Wild in Zoos, Wildlife Parks, and Beyond.

John, K.D. (2023). ‘The horse is Indigenous to North America: Why silencing the horse is so important to the settler project', In R. De Vos (Ed.), Decolonising Animals, Sydney University Press.

John, K.D. (2022). What does it mean to be educated? In P. Vallejo. & V. Werito, (Eds), Transforming Diné Education: Innovations in Pedagogy and Practice (pp. 101-108). University of Arizona Press.

Stallones Marshall, L. & John, K.D. (2021). We are still here: Teaching Native American social justice in the K-12 classroom. In R.W. Evans (Ed.), Handbook on Teaching Social Issues (pp. 145-154). Information Age Publishing.

John, K.D. (2019). Animals. In Keywords in Radical Philosophy of Education. Brill-Sense.

*John, K.D. (2018). Rez Ponies and Confronting Sacred Junctures in Decolonizing and Indigenous Education. In L.T. Smith, E. Tuck, & K. W. Yang (Eds.), Indigenous and Decolonizing Studies in Education (pp. 50-61). New York: Routledge.

John, K.D. (2017). ‘Are you a feminist epistemologist?’ In S. Travis, A.M. Kraehe, E.J. Hood, & T.E. Lewis (Eds.), Pedagogies in the Flesh: Teaching, learning, and the embodiment of sociocultural differences in education, (pp. 145-149). Palgrave MacMillan.

*John, K.D. & Ford, D. (2017). The rural is nowhere: Bringing Indigeneity and urbanism into educational research. In W. M. Reynolds (Ed.), Forgotten places in the new gilded age of greed and insensitivity (pp. 3-13). New York: Peter Lang.

Refereed Journal Articles

John, K.D. (forthcoming). Relationships with horses and humans: Smith’s legacy. In Qualitative Research Journal. DOI: 10.1108/QRJ-03-2024-0070

John, K.D. (in press). What it’s like to be an off-rez rural Indian?: Adding complexity to place and education. In Special Issue In Rural Educator.

John, K.D., & John, G.H. (2023). A Review of Indigenous Perspectives in Animal BioSciences. Annual Review of Animal Biosciences, 11, 307-319.

John, K.D. & Williams-Brown, K. (2019). Settler/Colonial Violences: Black and Indigenous Coalition Possibilities through Intergroup Dialogue Methodology. In American Indian Culture and Research Journal, 43(2)135-156.

John, K.D. (2019). Animal Colonialism—Illustrating Intersections Between Animal Studies and Settler Colonial Studies through Diné Horsemanship. Humanimalia—A Journal of Human/Animal Interface Studies, 19(2). Retrieved from:

Jaffee, L.J. & John, K.D. (2018). Disabling the earth: Reframing disability justice in conversation with Indigenous theory and activism. Disability and the Global South: Special Issue Intersecting Indigeneity, Colonisation and Disability, 5(2), 1407-1429.

Co-Authored Books

Co-author, Black | Indigenous 100s Collective (2023). Say, Listen: Writing with Care. NP: Press.