Biography
My research investigates how indigenous peoples in the interior Pacific Northwest have approached and responded to nation-state institutions, specifically, the US-Canadian border. I am currently working on a dissertation tentatively titled “Behind and Beyond the Line: Indigenous Communities, International Borders, and Native Identities on the Columbia Plateau, 1850s-1920s,” in which I analyze how native group identities persisted and evolved through the US and Canada’s imposition of the border that ran through tribal homelands. My dissertation demonstrates that mobile bands and families of indigenous nations maintained cultural and social connections beyond the 49th Parallel while actively engaging their status as recognized political entities in their relations with either nation-state. This project considers broader themes of state power, indigenous identity, borderlands, construction of race, contested geographies, and settler colonialism.