Adrian V. Chavana

Adrian Chavana, a native of Houston, Texas, received his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities in 2023. He worked closely with a tribal community of Mission Indian descendants in San Antonio, Texas to research and write his dissertation, which he is now revising into his first book tentatively titled Becoming Gente de Razón: The San Antonio Mission Indians and Their Descendants. Pushing back against narratives of Indian extinction in San Antonio by critically unpacking issues of mestizaje and the politics of recognition, the book explores how the San Antonio Mission Indians and their descendants not only survived through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries but are now in the midst of a cultural and political resurgence, fighting for state recognition as an Indian tribe.

Adrian is a member of the Alamo Museum Planning Committee, serving as an advisor to museum planners about the Indigenous people of San Antonio for the new Alamo Visitor Center and Museum that is scheduled to open in 2027 in Alamo Plaza. He is also advising museum planners at the UTSA Institute of Texan Cultures in San Antonio on a new gallery exhibit about the Indigenous people of San Antonio.