Rodney Frey is a professor of ethnography. Over the last four decades he has been associated with and conducting various applied, collaborative projects with the Apsáalooke (Crow) of Montana, the Schitsu’umsh (Coeur d'Alene) and Nimíipuu (Nez Perce) of Idaho, and the Confederated Warm Springs Tribes of Oregon.

Among his primary teachers, and to whom he acknowledges his indebtedness to, are Tom and Susie Yellowtail, Lawrence Aripa, Josiah and D’Lisa Pinkham, Cliff and Lori SiJohn, Alvin Howe, and Rob and Rose Moran.

From 2012 to 2015, Frey served as the director of General Education. He continues to teach courses on indigenous cultures and assist graduate students in their research.

• Indigenous curriculum development
• Research Methodology, working collaboratively on applied projects with Indigenous Peoples
• Indigenous Peoples of the North American Plateau and Plains, and the confluence of their oral traditions and Euro-American contact history
• World Religions:
  • Buddhism
  • Christianity
  • Hinduism
  • Indigenous
  • Islam
  • Judaism
  • Taoism

• The World of the Crow Indians: As Driftwood Lodges. (University of Oklahoma Press 1987 and paper 1993).
• Stories That Make the World: Oral Literature of the Indian Peoples of the Inland Northwest as Told by Lawrence Aripa, Tom Yellowtail and other Elders.(University of Oklahoma Press 1995 and paper 1999).
• Landscape Traveled by Coyote and Crane: The World of the Schitsu'umsh - Coeur d'Alene Indians, in collaboration with the Schitsu'umsh (University of Washington Press 2001; 2005).
• Nez Perce Tribe Lifelong Learning Online Module (Nez Perce Tribe 2001)
• Coeur d'Alene Tribe Lifelong Learning Online Module (Coeur d'Alene Tribe 2002)
• Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs Lifelong Learning Online Module (Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs 2003)
• "If all these great stories were told, great stories will come!" co-authored with Tom Yellowtail (Crow) and Cliff SiJohn (Coeur d’Alene), as presented at the Indigenous Ways of Knowing International Conference, Lewis and Clark College (2007). This paper chronicles my recent journey with cancer, and the healing that came from my family and friends in the Indian community. It also appears in Religion and Healing in Native America, edited by Suzanne Crawford (Praeger Press 2008).
• Sqigwts.org (Coeur d’Alene Tribe and University of Idaho 2015)
• Carry Forth the Stories: An Ethnographer’s Journey into Native Oral Tradition (Washington State University Press 2017).

Applied, collaborative research with the Crow of Montana (since 1974), the Coeur d'Alene of Idaho (since 1990) and Nez Perce of Idaho (since 1995), and the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, Oregon (since 2001), along with other American Indian communities focusing of indigenous oral tradition and ethnography (including epistemology, oral narratives, language, sense of place, spiritual and artistic expression, cultural change and Euro-American contact history), Natural Resource Damage Assessment, and indigenous curriculum development.

• Outstanding Achievement in the Humanities Award, Idaho Humanities Council, 2023
• The Evans Handcart Book Award, from the Mountain West Center at Utah State University, for the book Carry Forth the Stories
• Teaching Excellence Award 2012
• Distinguished Humanities Professor 2011-12 - College of Letters, Arts and Social Sciences
• UNITY Service Medallion, UNITY Student Organization and the Office of Multicultural Affairs 2006
• Research Excellence Award 2005
• Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Distinguished Faculty Service Award 2003
• Humanities Fellow, College of Letters, Arts, and Social Sciences 2002-03