Kathleen (Kathy) Fine-Dare is professor emeritus of anthropology and gender/women’s Studies at Fort Lewis College (FLC), in Durango, Colorado. With support from the National Science Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the Fulbright Scholar program, and the Fort Lewis College Foundation, she has taught graduate studies and conducted archival and ethnographic field research in Quito, Ecuador, since the 1980s. Fine-Dare has given lectures on both her Ecuador-based and NAGPRA work at the FLACSO university in Quito, Johns Hopkins University, George Mason University, the School of Advanced Research, DePauw University, and Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan, among several other venues. She gave a keynote address in 2021 at the Sixth Congress of Ecuadorian Anthropology, and will teach courses in a new Quito-based MA program in 2024.

During her career at FLC, Kathy served until 2022 as Chair of the NAGPRA Committee and as NAGPRA Liaison. Over the years, she received the FLC Roger Peters Distinguished Professor Award, the Alice Admire Outstanding Professor award, and was selected as Featured Scholar. In 2016, Fine-Dare was the only US scholar invited to speak at and contribute to the published proceedings of an international repatriation conference held in Padova, Italy, entitled “The Great Laboratory of Humanity: Collection, Patrimony and the Repatriation of Human Remains.” In 2020, Kathy served as John S. Jemison Visiting Professor in the Humanities at the University of Alabama-Birmingham, where she taught classes in both the Anthropology and Peace & Human Rights programs, gave a community lecture entitled “NAGPRA at 30: Three Decades of Native American Repatriation Law & Matters of Restorative Justice,” and consulted with regional NAGPRA scholars and practitioners. She is the author and/or editor of six books, including Grave Injustice: The American Indian Repatriation Movement and NAGPRA (Nebraska), The Andean World (co-edited with Linda J. Seligmann, Routledge), and the forthcoming Spanish translation of Urban Mountain Beings: History, Indigeneity, and Geographies of Time in Quito, Ecuador (Lexington, 2020; San Francisco de Quito University Press, 2023). Kathy lives in Durango with political scientist Dr. Byron Dare, and currently serves on the boards of the Colorado Fulbright Association, the Durango chapter of the American Association of University Women, and the Mesa Verde Association.