Chris Cornelius is a citizen of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin. He is the founding principal of studio:indigenous, and professor and chair of architecture at the University of New Mexico. 

Across his design and teaching practices, Cornelius has continually sought to challenge cultural expectations of Indigenous design, envisioning a contemporary architectural language with which to translate Native American values and rituals into the form of experience. In the studio’s ongoing design of a space for Indigenous creatives, scholars, and activists at the Forge Project in Taghkanic, New York, the architect is following this approach to foster a sense of kinship, building a reciprocal relationship between architecture and the land on which it rests.