Dr. DaShanne Stokes is a sociologist, author, speaker, and public intellectual whose work examines power, inequality, politics, social institutions, recognition, and social change. His public scholarship has also addressed religious freedom, civil rights, Native American rights, the First Amendment, discrimination, and the relationship between individual rights and institutional power. His engagement with religious freedom began long before his current academic research program: from 2005 to 2008, Dr. Stokes founded and directed Religious Freedom with Raptors (RFR), a political advocacy organization focused on protecting Native American religious freedom and reforming policies governing the possession and use of eagle feathers for religious and spiritual purposes. Under his leadership, RFR helped mobilize opposition to California Senate Bill AB1729 and contributed to changes in the legislation that protected the religious freedom of more than 400,000 Native American people. His work on the eagle-feather issue was subsequently cited as an authority in legal filings in McAllen Grace Brethren Church v. Salazar, a Fifth Circuit case involving Native American religious freedom and access to eagle feathers.

Dr. Stokes has written for national and specialized publications about religious freedom, civil rights, Native American rights, discrimination, and the First Amendment. His public scholarship has appeared in The Huffington Post, The Advocate, Indian Country Today, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and other publications, and his writing on religious freedom was reprinted as a textbook chapter in eight editions of a textbook published by California State University, Long Beach. He has also discussed religious freedom and related questions of rights, equality, and discrimination in multiple media appearances and public forums. His work brings together academic scholarship, public writing, advocacy, and media commentary to examine how claims of religious liberty intersect with human rights, equality, institutional power, and the lived experiences of marginalized communities.