Shana Bushyhead Condill has worked in the museum and cultural field for over twenty years. In her current role as Executive Director of the Museum of the Cherokee People in Cherokee, North Carolina, Condill furthers a career-spanning commitment to cultivating Native representation and self-representation in public spaces, advocating for the intentional combining of mainstream best practices with Native best practices in cultural preservation.
For Condill, cultural perpetuation is a family value: in the 1990s, her grandfather, Robert H. Bushyhead, working with her aunt Jean Bushyhead and uncle Eddie Bushyhead, developed educational resources to perpetuate the Cherokee language, building a foundation for the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians’ current language initiative, the Kituwah Preservation and Education Program. Condill’s arrival at MotCP in 2021 was a full-circle career moment: her first professional museum experience was at her own tribal museum, where, as a college student eager to gain public history experience and Cherokee knowledge, she assisted in MotCP’s archives. That summer in Cherokee, she also led tours as a guide at Cherokee Historical Association’s Oconaluftee Indian Village, following in the footsteps of her aunt, who also worked at the living history museum, and her grandfather, who played Elias Boudinot in Cherokee Historical’s dramatic production Unto These Hills.
Holding degrees from Wesleyan University and the University of Delaware, Condill’s professional experience has taken her to museums and cultural institutions across the country. At the 200 Acres, a sixth-generation farm in Illinois, she created exhibitions for 80,000 annual visitors in a 1910 one-room schoolhouse and at the Amish Interpretive Center. While at the National Trust for Historic Preservation, she managed financials, contractors, and human resources of a combined 126-acre site that includes the home of a descendant of George Washington and a Frank Lloyd Wright house. Before her appointment at MotCP, Condill worked in the Communications and Content Strategy, Publishing, and Branding departments of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, serving on the museum’s Mission, Values and DEIA committees. Presently, Condill serves on the board of the Blue Ridge National Heritage Area and the Book Publishing Advisory Council of the Great Smoky Mountains Association, and was appointed to the North Carolina Historical Commission.
