Board of Directors
ERICA PRETTY EAGLE COZAD
Erica Pretty Eagle Cozad is a multidisciplinary Indigenous artist, designer, illustrator, and photographer. She founded Pretty Eagle Designs in 2013, working across graphic design, photography, illustration, motion graphics, and fashion media. She has experience both in front of and behind the camera, including modeling, fashion photography, and short-form film.
Erica is very proud of her education and holds degrees in Multimedia Animation & Design, Art Entrepreneurship, and a Master of Arts. In 2022, she co-curated the Empowered Indigenous Fashion Show with her sister, Dr. Jessica Harjo, with a second show currently in the works for October 2026. For more info, please follow @empoweredindigenousfashion on social platforms.
Her latest expansion of work includes public art installations, children’s book illustration and authorship, mural projects (paint & digital), social media specialist for INDIGICHIC, and proudly owns her very own professional photography studio in Tulsa, OK. When she’s not creating, Erica is usually with her husband, daughter, and family, and probably traveling to a powwow!
Teresa Erin Parker
Teresa “Erin” Parker (Absentee Shawnee/Kiowa/Cherokee/Kickapoo) is a Native American educator living in Tulsa, OK. In 2022 she received a scholarship through the Cherokee Nation Film Office for a Writing for the Screen Workshop at Oklahoma State University-Tulsa. During that Writing for the Screen Workshop she developed a 5-minute short from logline to final screen play. She has written curriculum for middle school students, piloted a Native American Literature class for middle school students, and helped revise Oklahoma History curriculum to include the Native American perspective.
She wants to use her talents as an educator and writing cultural curriculum to create historically accurate stories in a way that children of any age can learn from and enjoy. Erin’s favorite things to write about are emotionally complex mothers and the children they are raising, especially in the realm of historical fiction. She believes that cultural identity leads to academic success for the Native students that she currently works with and all the children she will reach with her writing.
Chelsea T. Hicks
Chelsea T. Hicks is Wahzhazhe of the Pawhuska District, and a citizen of the Osage Nation. The author of A Calm & Normal Heart, which won the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 Award and was longlisted for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, she is an interdisciplinary writer and artist who began studying the Osage language in 2017. She has worked as a model since 2019, appearing on Vogue.com and walking runways in support of Indigenous designers. Through their art and modeling, they aim to serve as an advocate for Indigenous language learning for holistic health and Indigenous futuring. She is the founding artist of Words of the People, with a vision to support Indigenous language creative production.
Currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Oklahoma in Interdisciplinary Studies, their past training is in creative writing and art via an M.A. at the University of California, Davis and an M.F.A. at the Institute of American Indian Arts. Their work contemplates rematriation as a form of language and land connection, and has appeared in Poetry, World Literature Today, Yellow Medicine Review, the Manetti Shrem Museum, Tulsa Artist Fellowship Flagship, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and elsewhere. Past residencies include MASS MoCA, Northwestern Oklahoma State University, Elsewhere Studios and the Tulsa Artist Fellowship.
Alex Deroin
Alex DeRoin is a Two Spirit Neo-Dadaist artist, Poet, best-selling author, and awarded water protector. Alex comes from the Osage, Otoe, Pawnee, Blackfeet, and Ioway tribes. They are an active member of the 𐓒𐓂͘𐓒𐓂𐒿𐒻 district and headright holder for the Osage Minerals Estate. They are the pioneer of LAN𐓈𐒰͘𐓈𐒰ISM (Landadaism), an interdisciplinary art movement that utilizes a unique cross-pollination of indigiqueer epistemology and the methodology of the Dadaist Movement. To embody a “visual rebellion” that questions, recontextualizes, or operates outside of heteronormative and conventional standards. That merges their art-making with their interpersonal resistance and reclamation of two-spirit joy in all their affairs.
Alex’s work has been featured in the Dennis R Neill Equality Center, the Tulsa Artist Coalition’s Gallery, Positive Space Gallery, Tulsa Art Fellowship’s Flagship gallery, The Great Plains Art Museum in the University of Nebraska, The Tallgrass Artist Residency, and most recently. Their writing is featured in the Anthology titled From the Heart of our Nations that is #1 on Oklahoma’s best sellers list.
Alex is also a co-founder for the Osage Reservation based Non-Profit named Kinship Model, and sits on the board of Tulsa Two-Spirit. Alex is a member of the Wellbriety Movement, which is an indigenous-led approach to addiction recovery and healing. Which acts as the foundation for their work and movement to embody the solutions they want to see in the world around them.
Casandra Lopez
Casandra López is a California Indian (Tongva/Luiseño) and Chicana writer who has received support from CantoMundo, Bread Loaf, and Sewanee. Winner of the 2026 James Welch Prize for Indigenous Poets. She’s the author of the poetry collection Brother Bullet and has been selected for residencies with Storyknife, Hedgebrook, and Macdowell. She is an Assistant Professor at UC San Diego and a Tongva language learner. Currently, she is working on We Are Singing Forever / Che’eenaxre Horuura’, a hybrid poetry collection informed by docupoetics and Indigenous language revitalization.
Maddie sanders
Maddie Sanders (Holatte) is a Tulsa based artist, graphic designer, and community advocate. She is an enrolled citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and a descendant of the Fort Mojave and Seminole Tribe. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in Communication Design from Fort Lewis College and has built a multidisciplinary career spanning graphic design, murals, illustration, and public art.
As the founder of Holatte Designs LLC, Maddie works with organizations, businesses, and communities to create meaningful visual experiences that bring people together. Her work has been featured in exhibitions throughout the United States and internationally, and she is a three-time Oklahoma City Thunder Artist Alumni, contributing artwork to the team’s events, campaigns, and community initiatives.
Beyond her creative practice, Maddie serves as Project Manager for the Muscogee (Creek) Nation’s Mvskoke Language Revitalization Department, where she supports language preservation, educational programming, and community engagement. Her background also includes Mvskoke language studies and participation in the Master-Apprenticeship Program at the College of the Muscogee Nation.
With a passion for the arts, education, and community development, Maddie values opportunities to connect people, encourage collaboration, and create spaces where diverse voices and perspectives are represented. She brings a creative and community-centered approach to her work, with a strong interest in expanding opportunities for artists and strengthening relationships throughout Tulsa’s Indigenous communities.
Staff
executive director | Claire Maracle
Claire Maracle is a Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) member of the Six Nations of the Grand River, born in Mankato, MN and raised as a guest on Muscogee, Osage, and Cherokee land (Tulsa, OK). This experience directly informs their work in rematriation and their conviction that language is the key to transcending displacement. As Executive Director of Words of the People, their decade of arts activism is driven by the belief that fluent futures are built through unyielding visibility and the active, creative celebration of living languages.
An interdisciplinary artist and organizer, their leadership spans over a decade of arts activism. They co-founded Poetic Justice, bringing literacy and poetry workshops to carceral settings that provided a framework for education as liberation. They served as Creative Director & Lead Educator for Louder Than a Bomb Oklahoma, instrumental in helping Tulsa launch the first regional offshoot of the Chicago program. Claire dedicated their time to mentoring youth in spoken word as a tool for self-determination and collective healing. They are a 2026 SUNY ESF Indigenous Writer in Residency at Cranberry Lake Biological Station and a 2026 Kenyon Review Writers Workshop Alumni. Their poetry has appeared in This Land Press, Emerge Magazine, New Words Press, Frontier Poetry, Wayfarer Magazine and elsewhere.
Alec Tiger
Alec Tiger is an enrolled citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. He holds an MFA in creative writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts in fiction, and in 2024 received the Harpo Foundation Native American Fellowship at the Vermont Studio Center. He is currently working on his first novel. Outside of writing, Alec has spent his career working with Tribal Nations and Indigenous communities across the United States, leading projects spanning economic and community development. He has a particular passion for place-based land and community planning. Alec primarily supports Words of the People with grants, fundraising, and strategic planning.
Roma Belle Carter Allegro
Roma Belle Carter Allegro is a graduate of The University of Tulsa with a Bachelor of Arts in Media Studies. She was selected as a Tulsa Service Year Fellow and matched here at Words of the People as our Digital Storyteller. Her degree path was largely guided by a curiosity to educate, create, and highlight underrepresented voices within our digital world. She pursued this passion as a correspondent and audio engineer for the podcast Focus: Black Oklahoma and for TUTV, the campus broadcasting organization. In addition, because of her 5 months spent in Thailand, Roma worked as a Global Ambassador for CIS Abroad, a national study abroad organization, where she garnered meaningful professional and personal relationships. She is of Nicaraguan, Italian and German descent with most of her family living in Seattle, Washington and Miami, Florida. In her free time she likes to create art with her friends and family.
COLLABORATORS
Collaborators include BLIS Collective, New Legacy Collective, The Tulsa Artist Fellowship, the Institute of American Indian Arts. WTP is a proud grantee-partner of the Poetry Foundation.
Words of the People is also a Tulsa Service Year Employer.
