Megan Baker (she/her) is a writer, researcher and citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. She is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Northwestern University.

Trained as a four-field sociocultural anthropologist, Megan specializes in Choctaw law, history and material culture. Her research considers the intersections of Indigenous sovereignty, race, economy and history of anthropology in North America with a particular focus on the relationship between tribal/US property laws, economic development and settler colonialism. In addition to these research interests, she teaches on federal Indian law, Indigenous feminisms and collaborative anthropology.

Megan’s current projects include scholarly and public-facing community-focused research. Her manuscript in progress examines historical and anthropological knowledge production on Oklahoma Choctaws as ethnographic objects to reveal how they have informed and worked in tandem with US property laws to facilitate land dispossession and challenges to Choctaw sovereignty in today’s era of resurgent American Indian political-economic power. This work illustrates how Indigenous polities have shaped the development of racial capitalism within their communities and wider US polity as well as how US-Indigenous treaties and tribal laws have shaped the state of Oklahoma and its politics in the post-McGirt era. Her community-based projects include archiving Choctaw collections with a county historical society and collaborating with fellow artists to revitalize rivercane basketry and traditional textiles.

From 2019-2023, Megan served as a Cultural Research Associate for the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma’s Historic Preservation department. As part of the Community Outreach and Research program, she was an editor and frequent author of "Iti Fabvssa," the Historic Preservation column in Choctaw Nation's Biskinik newspaper, the host of "Chahta Tosholi," a speaker series on Choctaw history and culture, and a researcher on government projects, community requests, and collaborations with archives, museums and other institutions. A specialist in 19th and 20th-century Choctaw legal history, Megan authored a series titled “A New Chahta Homeland: A History by the Decade,” which covers Oklahoma Choctaw history from 1830-2000s. She has consulted on exhibits with the Choctaw Cultural Center, Gilcrease Museum, musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac, Bibliothèque municipal de Versailles, and others.

Megan holds a PhD in Anthropology and MA in American Indian Studies from UCLA and BA in Ethnicity and Race Studies from Columbia University.

Contact her at megan.baker@northwestern.edu