Emma I. Cline Hansen

2024 Distinguished Alumni

B.A. Languages and Literatures '69

Museum curator, researcher and writer Emma I. Cline Hansen has dedicated her career to the study and interpretation of the arts and cultures of the Native people of the Great Plains.

An enrolled member of the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma, Hansen completed her B.A. at Oklahoma State University before heading south to the University of Oklahoma where she earned master’s degrees in sociology and anthropology.

Hansen's early professional experiences included university teaching and museum positions in Oklahoma that included working with tribal nations as they developed museums and cultural preservation programs.

At the Oklahoma Museum of Natural History, she curated traveling exhibitions in collaboration with the Apache Tribe of Oklahoma and Wichita and Affiliated Tribes. Later as curator of the Plains Indian Museum at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming, Hansen developed exhibitions, publications and programs that included the award-winning reinterpretation of the museum’s galleries. The exhibition “Powerful Images: Portrayals of Native America,” co-curated by Hansen, traveled to eight museums in the United States and Canada.

Hansen has authored books and articles and lectured at national and international museums and universities. Among her publications are the books “Memory and Vision: Arts, Cultures, and Lives of Plains Indian People” and “Plains Indian Buffalo Cultures: Art from the Paul Dyck Collection.”

Hansen retired from the Plains Indian Museum as senior curator and scholar and now lives near Yellowstone National Park in northern Wyoming with her husband and fellow OSU graduate Sterling L. Hansen.