Dr. Candessa Tehee is a Cherokee Nation citizen from the Locust, Tehee, Pumpkin, and McLemore families who earned her Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Oklahoma. She is also an accomplished artist who was recognized as a Cherokee National Treasure for fingerweaving in 2019.
She previously served as the Executive Director of the Cherokee Heritage Center and the Manager of the Cherokee Language Program, and she worked in the Office of Curriculum and Instruction at the Cherokee Nation Immersion Charter School.
She joined the faculty of Northeastern State University (NSU) in Fall 2016 as a professor in the Department of Cherokee and Indigenous Studies. She has served as the Coordinator for the Cherokee Cultural Studies and Cherokee Education degree programs, and she is the Chair of the Department of Cherokee and Indigenous Studies at NSU. In 2021, she was elected as the District 2 Tribal Councilor of the Cherokee Nation Tribal Council.

See Candessa Tehee, "ᎪᎩ ᎤᏗᏞᎩ ᏗᏛᎪᏗ ᎾᏂᏪᏍᎬ ᎶᎶ: You can hear locusts in the heat of the summer," in Allotment Stories: Indigenous Land Relations under Settler Siege (2021) edited by Daniel Heath Justice and Jean M. O'Brien. Find the book at the following link: https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/allotment-stories