Lance Michael Foster is an enrolled member of the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska. He was raised in Montana. He is an alumnus of the Institute of American Indian Arts (1980–81). He obtained his B.A. in Anthropology/Native American Studies from the University of Montana (1984), and earned an M.A. in Anthropology (1994) and a Masters in Landscape Architecture (MLA, 1997) from Iowa State University. He also worked for 15 years in archaeology and historic preservation, and 4 years as a cultural landscape historian.
Mr. Foster was Director of Native Rights, Land and Culture at the Office of Hawaiian Affairs (2003–2006), where he was an advocate for Hawaiian traditional rights, culture, land, and burial protection.
Mr. Foster has contributed culture/language preservation for his tribe since the early 1980s. He was a consultant for two award-winning documentaries, America’s Lost Landscape: The Tallgrass Prairie (2005) and Lost Nation: The Ioway (2007). He is the author and illustrator of The Indians of Iowa (University of Iowa Press, 2009) and other publications.
Mr. Foster is an independent scholar, artist, and storyteller. He teaches fine arts, archaeology, and environmental ethics as adjunct faculty at the University of Montana-Helena. He also researches sacred landscapes and the paranormal.