Description: Join our special guests Rosalyn LaPier and David R.M. Beck to hear the fascinating stories of Native Americans living in Illinois in the early 20th century.
Speakers: Rosalyn LaPier, Ph.D. (Blackfeet Tribe of Montana and Métis) and David R.M. Beck, Ph.D., Department of History, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
About the speakers: Rosalyn is an award-winning Indigenous writer, environmental historian, and ethnobotanist. They work within Indigenous communities to revitalize traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and to strengthen public policy for Indigenous languages. They are the author of two books including Invisible Reality: Storytellers, Storytakers and the Supernatural World of the Blackfeet, produced two Blackfeet language lexicons, and written dozens of articles and commentaries.
David R. M. Beck is the author and co-author of several award-winning books on the history of federal American Indian policy and urban American Indian history, including The Struggle for Self-Determination and City Indian. His book, Unfair Labor?, which Curtis Hinsley called “a master class in historical research and interpretation,” analyzes the labor and economic history of American Indian and Indigenous people who worked at and for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. His most recent book, Bribed with Our Own Money, examines federal use of coercion and bribery in an effort to eliminate the U.S. relationship with American Indian nations in the 1950s and 1960s. Dr. Beck taught in the Native American Studies Department at the University of Montana for more than two decades, and prior to that at NAES (Native American Educational Services) College and the University of Illinois at Chicago.