Heather Cahoon, PhD, is an award-winning poet and scholar of federal Indian policy. She received her MFA in Poetry from the University of Montana where she was the Richard Hugo Scholar. She has also been awarded a Potlatch Fund Native Arts grant and a Montana Arts Council Artist Innovation Award for her writing. Her chapbook, Elk Thirst, won the Merriam Frontier Prize and her book, Horsefly Dress, is forthcoming from the University of Arizona Press in September 2020. Heather is an Assistant Professor of Native American Studies at the University of Montana where she directs the American Indian Governance and Policy Institute. She grew up on the Flathead Reservation and is a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes.