Joe Shirley Jr. of Chinle, Ariz., is president of the Navajo Nation, which includes portions of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. Contact George Hardeen.

Lane Williams teaches communications at Brigham Young University-Idaho. He is a former reporter and has conducted research into media coverage of the LDS (he is a Mormon) and Romney’s candidacy.

Kathleen S. Fine-Dare is professor of anthropology and gender/women’s studies at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colo., and has expertise on Native North America. She wrote Grave Injustice: The American Indian Repatriation Movement and NAGPRA (University of Nebraska Press, 2002).

Rodney Stark is the author of The Rise of Mormonism, a collection of essays. He is Distinguished Professor of the Social Sciences at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. Stark has frequently delved into the historical aspects of Christian origins, in books such as The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History and Cities of God: The Real Story of How Christianity […]

Ward Churchill, who is Creek and Cherokee, was a professor of ethnic studies and coordinator of American Indian studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is a leader in the American Indian Movement of Colorado. His numerous books include, as author, Speaking Truth in the Teeth of Power: Lectures on Globalization, Colonialism and Native […]

Gregory Cajete, a member of the Santa Clara Pueblo, directs Native American studies at the University of New Mexico.

Carl Mosser is a co-editor of The New Mormon Challenge: Responding to the Latest Defenses of a Fast-Growing Movement. He is an associate professor of biblical studies (on leave) at Eastern University in St. Davids, Pa.

Michelene E. Pesantubbee is assistant professor of religious studies and of American Indian and Native studies at the University of Iowa, Iowa City. Her publications include “In Search of the White Path: American Indian Peacebuilding” in Religion and Peacebuilding.

Greg Johnson is a founder of Standing Together, a Utah-based group that promotes evangelical-Mormon dialogue and understanding. He has previously said a Romney candidacy would cause great concern among evangelicals, many of whom think of Mormons as a non-Christian cult.