PRESIDENT

Veronica is currently a Senior Cultural Resources Specialist with Barr Engineering Co. She has 18 years of experience in cultural resources management across the Midwest and Upper Midwest, with the past four years spent primarily working on projects in Minnesota. Veronica is particularly interested in professional development and mentoring opportunities for students and early‑career archaeologists, and she is deeply committed to advancing meaningful, respectful tribal engagement and involvement in archaeological practice.

IMMEDIATE PAST PRESIDENT

Lucy is an archaeologist with the Minnesota State Historic Preservation Office. She has practiced archaeology for approximately 15 years, the last 8 of which have been primarily in Minnesota. Prior to working at SHPO, Lucy spent most of her career working in the field conducting archaeological survey and working with Tribal partners to support survey to identify traditional cultural places.

VICE PRESIDENT

Travis Armstrong is an enrolled member of the Leech Lake Reservation Band of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe. He also has immediate family on White Earth, his grandfather’s reservation.

Travis is a fire-line trained archaeologist. He was a Senior Environmental Scientist for CAL FIRE after serving twice as a regional archaeologist responsible for San Diego, Orange County and the Eastern Sierras. He was the Curator of Native American Cultures at UCLA, in charge of UCLA’s archaeological collections and also serving as the campus NAGPRA Coordinator. Travis has extensive experience working for four California tribal governments including serving as Tribal Historic Preservation Officer (THPO), Tribal Archaeologist and Native American Cultural Monitor.

He has a JD from the UCLA School of Law, MA in anthropology from Temple University and MA in applied archaeology from Cal State San Bernardino. His thesis at Cal State focused on a wild rice camp at Big Rice Lake in northern Minnesota.

He is the Secretary/Treasurer of the Register of Professional Archaeologists.

Travis is chair of the Curation Interest Group and serves on the Committee for Native American Relations, Museum, Collections and Curation Committee, and Native American Scholarship Committee of the Society for American Archaeology.

Travis is past president of the San Diego County Archaeological Society where he heads the Native American Engagement and Collaboration Committee. He also is on the Board of Trustees of the San Diego Archaeological Center, a federal repository and museum. He is the Legislative Committee Chair of the Society for Hawaiian Archaeology.

SECRETARY/TREASURER

Laura values a community engaged, interdisciplinary approach to historical research. She holds a bachelor’s in anthropology and a master’s of heritage studies & public history from the University of Minnesota. She is currently Tribal Archivist of the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community while studying tribal sovereignty & federal Indian law at UMD.

NEWSLETTER EDITOR

Ivy Faulkner was born in Phoenix, Arizona. She received her bachelor’s degrees in Anthropology, History, and Classics at Arizona State University and her master's and doctorate degrees in Anthropology at the University of Minnesota. She currently works in the field of cultural resources management at Bolton & Menk, Inc., primarily on projects in the State of Minnesota.