Renae Watchman (Diné and Tsalagi) is Bitter Water, born for Towering House, Bird Clan (Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma), and Red Running Through the Water. She is an associate professor of Indigenous studies at McMaster University and the co-editor of Indianthusiasm: Indigenous Responses.

"Restoring Relations introduces, synthesizes, and analyzes traditional stories by Dinâe and Dene storytellers in orature and film. Restoring storied autonomy, identities, kinship, and languages is coming to a state of harmony, beauty, wellness, peace, and balance by recognizing hane' (story/narrative) in oral, literary, and visual formats (spoken, published, directed, and beaded). The book conceptualizes narrative autonomy as hane'tonomy and visual storytelling from a Dinâe perspective and offers a map for restorying that resists inauthentic and misappropriated stories. The base of the argument privilege Indigenous narratives and how these narratives are tied to land and relations. In the book's final movement, the author explores the power of story to forge ancestral and kinship ties between the Dinâe and Dene, across time and space through re-storying of relations"--