David Lowry

David Shane Lowry is an anthropologist and enrolled member of the
Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina. He grew up in the Lumbee community
in Robeson County, North Carolina. In 2022-2023, he was Visiting
Senior Fellow in the School of Social Policy at Brandeis University. In
2021-22, he was Distinguished Fellow in Native American Studies at
MIT. In this role, David led a new conversation at MIT about the
responsibilities of MIT (and science/technology education, more
generally) in the theft of American Indian land and the dismantling of
American Indian health and community.

Since 2013, David has lectured across the United States – roles in which
he has become well versed in conversations at the intersection of
Native America, race, sports and science/health. His first book,
titled Lumbee Pipelines: American Indian movement in the residue of settler
colonialism, which you can pre-order with University of Nebraska Press,
explores American Indian utilization of colonial conditions to create
opportunities that are both uplifting and oppressive. He is beginning a
second book with MIT Press titled Indigenous MIT: why we must save
science and technology from American genocide. 

David is a graduate of MIT (SB) and UNC-Chapel Hill (MA and PhD). His
graduate work was funded by the National Science Foundation
Graduate Research Fellowship (NSF-GRF). At University of Southern
Maine, David is leading IRL (Indigenous Relationships Lab) as a place for
and commitment to justice and re-mattering of American Indian and
other Indigenous peoples from Maine, to Massachusetts, to North
Carolina. The USM radio station, WMPG, produces a podcast – titled
“Returning the Land” – that is hosted by David. It is available on Apple,
Spotify, and other podcast platforms.