Valerie Lambert is professor of anthropology and an enrolled citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. She received her Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from Harvard University and has won awards for undergraduate teaching and for each of her two single-authored books. Her first book is about her Tribe; her second one is about American Indian and Alaska Native workers in the Bureau of Indian Affairs. She has twice been elected president of the Association of Indigenous Anthropologists. She is the mother of two daughters, both of whom are in their twenties.