Meet Our Scholars

Sarah Biscarra Dilley is a multidisciplinary artist, educator, and member of the yak titʸu titʸu yak tiłhini Northern Chumash tribe currently residing at xučyun (Oakland), the unceded homeland of the Chochenyo Ohlone people (unratified Treaty “E” region).

 

Her interdisciplinary process is grounded in collaboration across experiences, communities, and places. Relating land and beings throughout nitspu tiłhin ktitʸu, the State of California and places joined by shared water, her written and visual texts connect extractive industries, absent treaties, and enclosure to emphasize movement, resilience, sovereignty, and self-determination.

 

As an Indigenous Californian from an unrecognized tribe, as the granddaughter of arrivant and migrant farmworkers, a former high school dropout, and a first-generation graduate student with no financial support from family, her education has been hard-fought. Acknowledging the high price that was paid for her to pursue an education, her goals are a reflection of cultural protocols. Wealth, which for many in her community is recognized as knowledge, is only truly held when expressed through generosity.

While much of her foundations are shaped by body, land, and the worlds in and around us, she began her undergraduate studies at the Institute of American Indian Arts (Santa Fe, NM), has a BA in Urban Studies from the San Francisco Art Institute, an MA in Native American Studies from University of California, Davis, where she is currently a Ph.D. Candidate in Native American Studies.