In Memoriam: Karenne Gayle Wood, 1960-2019

Karenne Wood, the director Virginia Indian Programs at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and who taught in the anthropology department at the University of Virginia, died on July 21. She was 59 years old and had suffered from cancer.

Dr. Wood was a member of the Monacan Indian tribe on whose ancestral lands include the campus of the University of Virginia. She was a lifelong advocate for Virginia Indians and other Native American communities. Dr. Wood had served on the Virginia Humanities staff since 2007. She was instrumental in the establishment of the Virginia Indian Archive, an online trove of documents, images, and audiovisual resources documenting Virginia Indian communities dating to colonial times.

Dr. Wood was the author of two poetry collections, Markings on Earth (University of Arizona Press, 2001) and Weaving the Boundary (2016). She earned a master’s of fine arts degree from George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, and a Ph.D. in anthropology at the University of Virginia. She was the first Monacan Indian to earn a Ph.D. at the university.