In my work as a cultural anthropologist, I use ethnographic, historical, and semiotic methods to study Indigenous (American Indian) activism in contemporary struggles for survival and self-determination. I have published peer-reviewed articles in Current Anthropology, American Anthropologist, American Ethnologist, Comparative Studies in Society and History, and Ethnohistory, among others, and have received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Philosophical Society.

My current research project focuses on the "Indian News," a collection of over 1,400 articles written by four men from the Ho-Chunk Nation for local newspapers in central Wisconsin between 1915 and 1954. The book will focus on their account of American Indian life in the pivotal decades of the Great Depression and World War II and on how their writings made “Indian News” a new literary genre and popular print commodity.

My first book, Ho-Chunk Powwows and the Politics of Tradition (Nebraska 2016), focuses on the powwow, a widespread celebration of Indigenous music and dance. It traces the way the people of the Ho-Chunk Nation in Wisconsin developed their powwow tradition from the 19th to the 21st centuries as they confronted the tensions between the  economic value of their cultural performances in the regional tourist industry and the social/cultural value of such performances as occasions for reaffirming the bonds of peoplehood.

I also have an active interest in the History of Anthropology, particularly in the “action anthropology” of Nancy Oestreich Lurie (1924-2017) and the “heterodox” Boasian anthropology of Paul Radin (1883-1959). I am a convener for the American Anthropological Association's History of Anthropology Interest Group.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS AND PRESENTATIONS

Book

2016  Ho-Chunk Powwows and the Politics of Tradition. Lincoln, NE: The University of Nebraska Press.

Articles (Selected)

2023."Decolonization and the History of Americanist Anthropology: Introduction to the Special Issue." Journal of Anthropological Research. 

2023. "Joining the Ongoing Struggle: Vine Deloria, Nancy Lurie, and the Quest for a Decolonial Anthropology." Journal of Anthropological Research. (link to download)

2022. “The Indian’s White Man: Indigenous Knowledge, Mutual Understanding, and the Politics of Indigenous Reason.” Current Anthropology. Vol. 63, No. 1.

2019. "Rediscovering Nancy Oestreich Lurie’s Activist Anthropology." American Anthropologist. Vol. 121, No. 3: 725-728. 

2016. "Settler Agnosia: Indigenous Action, Functional Ignorance, and the Origins of Ethnographic Entrapment." American Ethnologist. Vol. 43, No. 3: 465-474. [link to download]

2015. "Voices and Votes in the Fields of Settler Society: American Indian Media and Electoral Politics in 1930s Wisconsin." Comparative Studies in Society and History. Vol. 57, No. 3.  [link to download]

2014. "The Emergence of Indigeneity and the Politics of Race and Culture in Native North America." Reviews in Anthropology. Vol. 43, 79-105.

2013 "Mediating Indigeneity: Ho-Chunk 'Indian News' as a Critique of the Legacies of Settler Colonialism." Settler Colonialism Studies. Vol. 3, No. 2, 202–213.

2012  “Autobiography en Abyme: Indigenous Reflections on Representational Agency in the Case of Crashing Thunder.” Ethnohistory Vol. 59, No. 1.

2010 “The making and muting of an indigenous media activist: Imagination and ideology in Charles Round Low Cloud’s ‘Indian News’.” American Ethnologist, Vol. 37, No. 3. [link to download]

Book Chapters (Selected)

2009  “Imagining Activist Agendas: Urban Institution-Building, Tribal Sovereignty, and the Articulatory Moment.” American Indian Activism in the Sixties. Edited by Terry Straus and  Kurt Peters. Chicago: Albatross Press. Pages 234-252.

2009 “Indigenous Agendas and Activist Genders: Chicago’s American Indian Center, Social Welfare, and Native American Women’s Urban Leadership.” Keeping the Campfires Going: Native Women’s Activism in Urban Communities. Edited by Susan Applegate Krouse and Heather Howard. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Pages 234-252.

2005 "Ho-Chunk ‘Indian Powwows’ of the Early Twentieth Century." In Powwow. Edited by Clyde Ellis, Luke Eric Lassiter, and Gary H. Dunham. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Pages 46-67.

 2002    “Relocation’s Imagined Landscape and the Rise of Chicago’s Native American Community.” In Native Chicago. Edited by Terry Straus. Second Edition. Chicago: Albatross Press. Pages 159-172.

Recent Conference and Seminar Presentations (since 2017)

2021 "“Vine Deloria, Nancy Lurie, and the Sins of Anthropology." American Anthropological Association, Baltimore, MD.

2019     “The Ends of Indigneous Media Activism and the Ghosts of the Indian News.” American Anthropological Association, Vancouver, B.C. Canada.

2018     "How Should an Indian Write?: Struggles for Recognition in the Ho-Chunk Indian News." American Anthropological Association, San Jose, California.    

2017a. "Action Anthropology and Anthropological Engagements with Indigeneity: Nancy Oestreich Lurie, Ho-Chunk Reorganization, and the concept of the “Articulatory Movement.” American Society for Ethnohistory, Manitoba, CA.

2017b   "Rediscovering Nancy Oestreich Lurie’s Activist Anthropology. Roundtable presentation for "Voicing the Ancestors: Readings for the Present from Anthropology's Past." American Anthropological Association. Washington D.C.

2017c    Lecture: “Ho-Chunk “Indian News” and the Ends of Indigenous Media: Commensurating, Commodifying, Critiquing.”  Lecture Series “Commodifications,” Anthropology Institute, Leipizg University, Leipzig, Germany.

Other

2018. [Obituary Essay] Nancy Oestreich Lurie (1924-2017). American Anthropologist. Vol.130, No. 2: 383-386.

2008. “Ho-Chunk Powwows: Innovation and Tradition in a Changing World.” The Wisconsin Magazine of History. [link to download]