Julian Kunnie is Professor of Religious Studies/Classics at the University of Arizona. He is the author of numerous articles in various internationally recognized journals and books. He is the author (with Nomalungelo Goduka) of Indigenous Wisdom and Power: Affirming our Knowledge Through Narratives (2006); Is Apartheid Really Dead? Pan Africanist Working Class Cultural Critical Perspectives (2000); and Models of Black Theology: Issues of Class, Culture, and Gender (1994). His forthcoming book is Globalization and Its Victims: Wars Against the Earth and the Impoverished of the World. His has produced two educational DVDs - Umoya: The Spirit in Africa (2000), which illustrates the dynamic growth of Indigenous Churches in Africa; and Black and Brown: An Afro-Latino Journey (2006), which explores the ancient African presence in Mexico. He produced two DVDs in 2011, aided by Veronica Martinez - We Belong to Mother Earth: Dineh Elder and Hataali Jones Benally Speaks and The Global Indigenous Peoples Performing Arts Festival, from Pingtung, Taiwan, following his research visit to Taiwan and China in August 2011. He has delivered papers and lectures at colleges, universities, and communities on six continents. Kunnie is currently working on a prison research project that interrogates issues of race, class, and gender and is geared toward preventing the incarceration of youth, particularly those of color. He has visited Napierville Correctional Facility in South Africa and San Quentin Correctional Facility in California for his research. He recently launched the Nyakweri Ecological Restoration and Preservation Project with Samwel Naikada from Transmara, Kenya, that is concerned with studying the impact of global warming and climate change on the Nyakweri Forest Preserve. The project trains students in areas of ecological sustainability through practical immersion and living in the Nyakweri forest. Over the years and during his tenure as Professor and Director of Africana Studies at the UA, Kunnie pioneered/taught courses in Africana Philosophy, History, Political Economy, Geography, Psychology, History of Religions, Racism and Social Change, and Aesthetics of Dance. He currently teaches courses in African/Indigenous Religions, African American Religion, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., and is planning to teach a new course on Indigenous Religions, Buddhism, and Christianity in 2012.

Stephen Cornell is director of the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy and professor of sociology and of public administration and policy at The University of Arizona where he also serves as a faculty associate with the Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy. He also is codirector of the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, a research program headquartered at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University that he co-founded in the late 1980s with Professor Joseph P. Kalt. A specialist in political economy and cultural sociology, Cornell holds a Ph.D. degree from the University of Chicago and taught at Harvard University for nine years before moving to the University of California, San Diego, in 1989 and then to The University of Arizona in 1998. He has written widely on Indigenous affairs, economic development, collective identity, and ethnic and race relations. Among his publications are The Return of the Native: American Indian Political Resurgence, What Can Tribes Do? Strategies and Institutions in American Indian Economic Development (co-edited with Joseph P. Kalt), and Ethnicity and Race: Making Identities in a Changing World (co-authored with Douglas Hartmann). Cornell has spent much of the last 20 years working with Indigenous nations and organizations—mostly in the United States but also in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand—on governance, economic development, and tribal policy issues.