Dr. Paige Ford (project co-author) is a Station Archeologist with the Arkansas Archeological Survey, stationed at Plum Bayou Mounds Archeological State Park. She is a native of North Carolina and earned her Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Oklahoma in 2021, shortly before joining the survey. At her station she focuses on preservation and research, aiming to protect Plum Bayou Mounds from natural and human impacts as well as studying Plum Bayou peoples and their activities in the region. Her research primarily involves reconstructing the local and regional relationships Pre-Contact peoples forged and maintained, by examining how potters made, decorated, and used their ceramics. Along with her archeological research interests she is passionate about public education and outreach, seeking to create programs to teach everyone the importance of archeology and cultural heritage. Learn more about her station here: ARAS – Plum Bayou Research Station.
Sean Fitzgibbon (project artist and co-author) explores unusual, real places and events through his work. He has an MFA in art and a passion for making art and visual storytelling. He is a 2021 Artists 360 recipient and a 2022 recipient of the Arkansas Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship Award for his Kirkus starred, reviewed, graphic nonfiction book “What Follows is True: Crescent Hotel”. He has exhibited his work throughout the US. He also illustrates books and recently completed writing and illustrating a documentary-style graphic nonfiction that explores the Crescent Hotel’s strange two years as the Baker Hospital, one of the darkest and most controversial legends in the town of Eureka Springs, Arkansas. You can check out his work on his website: https://www.seanfitzgibbonart.com.
And many thanks to our amazing advisory committee members who lend their experience, voices, and expertise to this co-creative and collaborative project:
Billie Burtrum is a Quapaw Tribal Member as well as the Deputy Director of the Quapaw Nation Historic Preservation Program. She thoroughly enjoys studying history and cultures as well as attempting to translate that information to engage younger generations.
Rebecca “Becki” Houston is a teacher in Little Rock Public Schools. She has been teaching middle school social studies for about 17 years and acknowledges the importance of using graphic novels to draw students into reading and learning.
John Swogger is an archeological illustrator by background, and a long-time comics reader. His archeological background is mainly focused on the Eastern Mediterranean and British prehistory and early mediaeval archeology. He has worked in many capacities as an illustrator on archeological projects, which then led to him producing comics about history, archeology, and heritage with local and Indigenous communities in various places across the globe. He now works in partnership with the National Museum of the American Indian, writing and illustrating collaborative comics about NAGPRA repatriations and Tribal histories, working alongside Native historians, artists, and writers.
Betty Beard Gaedtke is an elder in the Quapaw Nation and former member of Quapaw Nation’s business committee, current member of the Quapaw Cultural Committee, and a Quapaw Potter. While she primarily focuses on making Quapaw and Mississippian pottery, she also makes regalia such as Quapaw dresses, skirts, ribbon skirts, shawls, buckskin dresses, moccasins, and beading. She teaches pottery and sewing as well as gives lectures for schools, universities, and more on Quapaw pottery and history.
Lauren Haupt is a citizen of the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma. She did her undergraduate degree in anthropology and Native American and Indigenous Studies and is currently working on her Ph.D. in Native American Studies at the University of New Mexico. Her focus is on reclaiming Indigenous self-representation and addressing ongoing harms as a result of paternalism in anthropology (and education programs in general).
Robin Gabe is the lead interpreter at Plum Bayou Mounds Archeological State Park. She has worked for Arkansas State Parks for 23 years and within those years as a front-line interpreter for 14 years. She is passionate about education and outreach, having built many programs aimed at teaching the many publics about history and archeology.