About Karen Coody Cooper

Personal Life

Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Karen Coody Cooper is a Cherokee citizen, which has informed her professional career, her writing and her art.

She first studied journalism before switching to anthropology, and she later earned a master’s in liberal studies from the University of Oklahoma.

She lived 20 years in Connecticut, 14 years in Maryland, 10 years in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, and currently lives in Lake Worth, Florida with her husband.

Now retired, she provides museum consultations, continues to write, and create both contemporary and replicated wampum belts. She is a proud mother and grandmother, and a lover of possums and cicadas.

Museum Career

Since beginning my museum career in 1979, I focused on battling stereotypes and misinformation about American Indians.

For almost a decade, I worked in a small museum in Connecticut (now the Institute of American Indian Studies), researched Southern New England Native history, and wrote and spoke throughout the Northeast on Native American topics.

In 1989 the New England History Teachers Association presented me with the Kidger Award for excellence in history education.

I continued at the Museum of the Great Plains in Oklahoma and at Jefferson Patterson Park and Museum in Maryland.

In 1994, I was recruited by the Smithsonian to manage their museum training program as mandated by the legislation establishing the National Museum of the American Indian.

That work took me to more than half the Native museums in the United States between 1994 and 2007, and brought me into contact with countless Native museum leaders.

I completed my museum career at the Cherokee Heritage Center by supervising its replicated 19th century living history Cherokee settlement for four years and serving as interim Executive Director in 2012.

My book Spirited Encounters chronicles Native protests of museum policies and is used in museum studies and American Indian studies.

Writing

Karen co-founded Tahlequah Writers, an active group promoting writing and reading in Northeastern Oklahoma. She also is known for editorials and POVs published in the Tulsa World and Palm Beach Post.

She wrote for and served on the board of Eagle Wing Press, a New England American Indian newspaper. EWP produced the book Rooted Like the Ash Tree containing the writings of American Indians, distributed to every school in New England. (She later married EWP editor, Jim Roaix.)

Karen co-edited a volume about American Indian museums called Living Homes for Cultural Expression (National Museum of the American Indian 2006), available for free download from the NMAI website.

Her poetry book, Fault Line: Vulnerable Landscapes (soddenbank press 2009) won 2010 Best Book of Poetry from the Oklahoma Writers Federation and was an Oklahoma Book Award finalist.

She self-published Cherokee Wampum War and Peace Belts: 1730 to Present (soddenbank press 2013). Recent books are Oklahoma Cherokee Baskets and Oklahoma Black Cherokees, both published by History Press.

>> See Books page for detailed listing of published works.