Karen Cooper works in finger weaving and is also an author. After fourteen years at the
Smithsonian Institution (most recently at the National Museum of the
American Indian) Karen Coody Cooper, enrolled citizen of the Cherokee
Nation of Oklahoma, now works at the Cherokee Heritage Center, Tahlequah,
OK as the Adams Corner Rural Village Program Coordinator. Born in Tulsa
in 1946, she grew up in Collinsville, graduated high school there in
1965, and studied journalism at the Oklahoma College for Women, Chickasha.
Moving to Connecticut, she changed her studies to anthropology/sociology
at Western Connecticut State University where she earned a B.A. in 1981.
Cooper worked in museum education at the American Indian Archaeological
Institute (Washington, Connecticut), the Museum of the Great Plains
(Lawton, Oklahoma), and Jefferson Patterson Park and Museum (St. Leonard,
Maryland). She became a proficient finger weaver in 1981, and has demonstrated
the craft in various museums including the American Museum of Natural
History in New York City. Her weavings are in museum and private collections,
have shown in galleries, and occur in art catalogs. Cooper wrote the
text for the first permanent exhibit on Algonquian Indians for the Connecticut
Museum of Natural History. She joined the Smithsonian in 1994 to manage
museum training for Native museums, and finished a Master of Liberal
Studies with museum emphasis degree at the University of Oklahoma in
1997. She has recently authored Spirited Encounters, published
by AltaMira Press, which chronicles American Indian protests of museum
policies and practices. She also co-edited Living Homes for Cultural
Expression about Native museums, published by the National Museum
of the American Indian. Her most recent book is a volume of poetry called
Fault Line: Vulnerable Landscapes.
She lives in Tahlequah in a historic home.
