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Soma received her B.A. in Native American Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, and her Ph.D. in the History of Consciousness Program at UC Santa Cruz. She has taught classes in Women’s Studies, Asian-American Studies, as well as Sociology.

Her students have strung up hundreds of shirts across campus, each garment representing a victim of violence, and hung red dresses, each representing a missing or murdered indigenous woman.

De Bourbon, whose ancestry is Blackfeet Indian and French, is also the faculty advisor to the Native American Student Association, at SJSU.

Her research has centered on the ways in which Native people are viewed as property through enslavement and detention, lack of enforcement of the Indian Child Welfare Act, and cultural appropriation.