PROGRAM IN ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY AND CULTURE

Dr. Eli Suzukovich III is currently an Assistant Professor of Instruction in the Program for Environmental Policy and Culture (WCAS); Director of Cultural Preservation and Compliance (Off. for Research); and a faculty affiliate in the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research. Outside of Northwestern, he is a Scientific Affiliate in the Negaunee Integrative Research Center at the Field Museum of Natural History within the Anthropology Department.

Dr. Suzukovich III is an anthropologist with a focus on cultural resource management, ethnography, religion, oral history, and ethno-biology. Through his academic and professional careers, Eli’s work has included community level research, archival collections research and management, applied ethnography, forensic research, and museum curation. He has worked on developing community-based citizen science projects and land-based science curriculum that focused on Indigenous perspectives of land, ecosystems, and cultural traditions and practices. Eli’s master’s research focused on contemporary conceptions of Cree and Ojibwe health and illness; and his dissertation focused on tribal identity and the sacred in urban Native American communities.

Eli's professional experience has focused on ethnography, cultural landscapes, oral history, and sacred site management. Eli was employed by Environmental Engineering and Management (E2M- a subsidiary of HDR, Inc.), an environmental management and explosives disposal company as a contract ethnographer. Within this capacity, he worked with multiple Wyoming and Montana tribal nations in assessing preservation status, and tribal access to culturally significant landscapes on Department of Defense land and conducting section 110 ethnographic surveys on land that was being acquired through purchase or transfer. Eli has also worked in other capacities including Archives and Special Collections Manager, Osteological Researcher (mummies), Forensic Osteology and Entomology field recovery, Medical Anthropology Research, and fruit orchard pest field technician for the Montana Department of Agriculture.

Beginning in 2018, Eli worked on the development and curation of the Native Truths: Our Voices/Our Stories exhibition hall, as a Research Scientist within the curation team, under the Curator of North American Collections. In this capacity, Eli worked on twelve community curated exhibits as a Research Scientist and co-curator between 2018-2022. Today, he continues assisting the Exhibitions and Anthropology Departments with the Native Truths Exhibition Hall.