Nursing Faculty

Dr. Cynthia Greywolf is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and an Indigenous scholar whose program of research examines the health impacts of colonization and historical trauma, with a focus on alcohol and substance use, cultural and structural determinants of health, and inequities affecting American Indian and Native Hawaiian communities. She is one of approximately 25 doctorally prepared American Indian nurses in the United States, providing rare and essential expertise in culturally grounded, community-engaged Indigenous health research.

Dr. Greywolf brings more than 20 years of experience as a psychiatric nurse practitioner and holds two doctorates in Nursing (DNP and PhD), supported by advanced graduate training in community health, gerontology, and psychiatric mental health. Her research is strengthened by longstanding relationships with tribal communities and a deep understanding of Indigenous epistemologies, data sovereignty, and culturally safe methodologies.

She was competitively selected as a fellow in the SAMHSA Minority Fellowship Program, one of the most prestigious federally funded research training programs in nursing, and was renewed for five consecutive years for her pioneering work on Native Hawaiian historical trauma and alcohol use. Her contributions were recognized with the UH Mānoa Nursing Dean’s Scholarly Project Award in 2020. Following her doctoral training, she was selected as one of only two fellows in the Provost’s Early Career Cohort Fellowship Program at the University of Texas at Austin School of Nursing, where she led health equity research with the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians and other tribal partners in Oklahoma and Texas.

Dr. Greywolf’s program of research also addresses American Indian academic fraud in academia, documenting the structural, relational, and epistemic harms caused by false claims to Indigenous identity. Her work advances tribal sovereignty, Indigenous data governance, and the ethical conduct of research in Indigenous communities.

Together, these strengths position her as a highly qualified PI to lead culturally grounded, community-engaged research on alcohol use and historical trauma among Cherokee Nation young adults, and to develop scalable, tribally informed prevention and intervention strategies.