Sharon Hoogstraten Biography

Sharon Hoogstraten is an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation and a retired professional photographer whose recent work centers on Indigenous history and cultural preservation. She is the author of Dancing for Our Tribe: Potawatomi Tradition in the New Millennium and a frequent lecturer on Native history and contemporary Indigenous issues.

Hoogstraten is featured in the award-winning documentary Archange Ouilmette: To Say Her Name, developed from interviews conducted by Susan Roe Musacchio, which explores the life and legacy of her ancestor, Archange Ouilmette—one of the earliest recorded Potawatomi women to live along the Chicago River prior to the city’s incorporation.

She serves as Vice President of the Potawatomi Trail of Death Association and sits on the board of the Gitchigamiin Indigenous Nations Museum, where she works to strengthen relationships among regional Native communities and advance public understanding of the Woodland Nations of the Great Lakes.

Multiple current exhibitions of her Potawatomi portrait work remind Native and non-natives alike ‘We are still here.'