Christina Dawa Kustmana Thomas is Numu [Northern Paiute], Newe [Western Shoshone], and Hopi [Tobacco Clan]. She grew up on the Pyramid Lake Paiute Reservation in Wadsworth, Nevada and is an enrolled member of the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony. Christina is a musician/singer, dancer, language warrior, cultural activist, and her greatest role, a mother. Christina graduated from the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) with a Bachelors of Arts in Music and Biology in 2019. Christina attained her Masters Degree in Native American Studies at the University of California, Davis in Spring 2021. Christina is currently attending UC Davis where she is a PhD Candidate in the Native American Studies Department and earning a Designated Emphasis in Performance and Practice Studies. Christina’s practice is rooted in the Great Basin, more specifically Northern Nevada. Her primary fields of study are historical musicology and language resurgence of Numu Yadooana [Northern Paiute language]. Christina's research amplifies Numu ways of doing music history – privileging Numu knowledges, languages, and performance – as a means to Indigenize music studies curriculum. As a recognized community leader Christina has been a part of community-based Numu arts and language regeneration projects for over a decade, primarily through documenting and performing traditional songs and stories to awaken her language. Christina was the driving force behind establishing Paiute Language at the UNR as the first Indigenous language in the state of Nevada in higher education.

Christina is currently a Graduate Student Researcher in the Native American Language Center (NALC) where she is helping to plan a language conference within the NALC and NAS Department that is scheduled for summer 2025. In addition to her duties for next summer's language reclamation workshops she is also working on documenting Numu stories from Elders in her community and recording and notating pageant dance songs from the post 1931 ban on Numu ways of being, knowing, and doing.