Waziyatawin is a Wahpetunwan Dakota professor, author, and activist from the Pezihutazizi Otunwe (Yellow Medicine Village) in southwestern Minnesota.

Waziyatawin was born Angela Lynn Cavender in 1968, in Virginia, Minnesota to Chris Mato Nunpa, a former professor of Indigenous Nations & Dakota Studies at Southwest Minnesota State University, and Edith Brown Travers, a social service director.

After the incident, Waziyatawin spent months trying to convince the school to drop Wilder's books from the curriculum but was unsuccessful.

[5] In 2007, she legally changed her name from Angela Cavender Wilson to Waziyatawin, a name an elder gave her as a child and which means "woman of the north".

[2] She edited her first book, Indigenizing the Academy: Transforming Scholarship and Empowering Communities, in 2004 with Devon Abbott Mihesuah.

As an activist, Waziyatawin gained public attention in 2007 when she was arrested multiple times while protesting Minnesota's sesquicentennial celebration.

[14] In 2011, she travelled to Palestine with a group of Indigenous and women of color scholars and artists including Angela Davis, Chandra Talpade Mohanty, and Ayoka Chenzira.