Colloquium centers on Native American History

In many classrooms around the country, a significant piece of history has been overlooked, American Studies professor Christina Snyder said.

“I see my work as filling in that gap of what most Americans know and the kind of history they should know,” Snyder said.

IU staff and students are invited to attend “Cultivating Sensibilities of Native/American Citizenship,” the second panel in the American Studies Colloquium Series, 2-4 p.m. today.

Snyder will show slides and discuss her book project while IU graduate student Sarah Dees will discuss her dissertation. They both focus on Native American history.

The American Studies Colloquium Series started this year in an effort to share student and staff research with others at IU. Each panel features presentations of a professor’s and graduate student’s work in a similar field, followed by a question-and-answer session with the audience.

“This is a chance to engage with each other and get a chance to see what other members of the faculty are working on,” Snyder said.

Snyder will put forward “‘The Nation, my Nation’: Indigenous Sovereignty in the Era of Indian Removal,” a presentation explaining some of the research she has done in the name of her book.

She is in the process of writing “Choctaw Academy: In the Dawn of American Empire,” a book about a boarding school in Oklahoma meant for Native American children set up by the federal government around the time the country was expanding west.

“One of the ways (Native Americans) try to preserve their nation and retain power is through education,” Snyder said.

Snyder will show slides of some of the artifacts she has collected from the school’s students, whether it be from their educational work or dealing with their social lives.
She said she is excited about the opportunity to share her work with others.

“I hope that they’ll think more critically about the consequences of American imperialism and the ways that Native Americans have tried to cope with that change,” Snyder said.

Snyder said she decided to write about Native American history because she thought it was an important part of history she never learned about in high school.

“I wanted to learn a different kind of history than I’d been through in high school, and I felt that the Native American study was very overlooked,” Snyder said.

As a Kansas native, Dees said she became interested in Native American history because she came from an area where they were prominent. She also said she noticed that certain stereotypes of Native Americans, such as the idea of the “wild west,” can have a negative implication.

“I just became interested in how native people are represented and how that can sometimes be damaging to them,” Dees said.

Her presentation, “Indigenous Religions and U.S. Assimilation Policies,” will feature an overview of her dissertation and then focus more on a particular chapter about the effect of scientific and anthropological studies on Native Americans. She said that many times, such as in Native American history, researchers can overlook the effect their studies have on their subjects.

“I’d like people to think about how scientific and anthropological studies can really have an impact on people,” Dees said.