Justin de Leon, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies at Chapman University. His research and filmmaking center on Indigenous sovereignty, resurgence, and storytelling, with a particular focus on how film can function as kinship and worldbuilding.

He is the author of Relational Filmmaking: Place, Power, Practice (University of Nebraska Press, forthcoming), which develops a framework for Indigenous filmmaking grounded in land, community, and resurgence. The book traces years of learning-in-action across projects in Southern California, Thunder Bay, and Eagle Butte, advancing concepts such as “landed relationality,” story as sovereignty, and film as kinship.

De Leon is the founding director of the First Peoples Film Lab, where he collaborates with Indigenous communities to train apprentices, create short films, and build infrastructures for relational filmmaking practice.