The ASU History Department's program in American Indian history ranks among the top programs in the nation. For over three decades it has maintained a superb record of training graduate students in the field. The faculty in this field have distinguished records of publication and professional activity at the national and international levels.

Curriculum

The faculty offer a regular series of graduate courses in American Indian history, including reading courses, seminars, and individually arranged reading courses. The growth of native history at ASU includes other courses, especially Western history, environmental history, policy history, community and urban history, and transborder history.

The senior expertise of the faculty has enabled graduate students to work in a wide range of periods and areas of American Indian history, including comparative studies with indigenous peoples in other countries. Graduate students in Indian history benefit from being part of a relatively large program and having numerous colleagues in this field for engaging in discussions about their work.

Students are encouraged to present their research at conferences and in publications, and they have compiled a distinguished record. ASU graduate student presence has been visible in an ongoing basis at the Western History annual conference, Ethnohistory, and regional conferences.

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Related Training Opportunities
The department is also connected with programs that provide additional training and experience. The H-AmIndian Project hosts an online discussion list and web site, providing training for graduate students in moderating scholarly, online discussions and creating internet resources in this field. The American Indian Treaty Encyclopedia Project is currently completing three volumes of entries of related treaty information.

Other areas and faculty throughout the university also provide important training and opportunities, especially through American Indian Studies. In addition, there are 35 native faculty members and other faculty in various departments such as English, as well as the Law School and the College of Education. History students often take courses in these departments, and their faculty may serve on the committees of History graduate students.

The university library has especially strong holdings in this area through the Labriola National American Indian Data Center in Hayden Library. ASU is close to several Indian reservations among the 22 tribes in the state, and the Center for Indian Policy and Leadership works with local tribes on various projects.

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Faculty Profiles

Donald L. Fixico (Shawnee, Sac & Fox, Muscogee Creek and Seminole) is Distinguished Foundation Professor of History. He is a policy historian and ethnohistorian. His work focuses on American Indians, oral history, and the West. He has published numerous articles and books with the most recent being, The American Indian Mind in a Linear World (2003) and Daily Life of Native Americans in the Twentieth Century (2006). Presently, he is completing a biography, Osceola: Patriot and Warrior of the Seminoles

Peter Iverson is a Regent’s Professor of History and specializes in American Indians in the twentieth century. His books and many articles on this subject have made him a leading scholar of American Indian history. His research interests include American Indians, Barry Goldwater, western water, cattle ranching, and the Aborigines of Australia.

Robert A. Trennert is an award-winning scholar who has published widely on American Indian history and federal Indian policy from the early Republic to the mid-twentieth century. His principal areas of interest are the Southwest, the American frontier, and Indian history.

Graduate Students

The department admits a relatively large number of students in this field, with roughly 25 currently in the program. These students reflect considerable diversity in background and training, and over the years the department has recruited Indian students from Arizona and elsewhere throughout the nation, as well as international students from Finland, Japan and other countries.

Patricia Biggs-Cornelius is a second year graduate student focusing on Environmental History and American Indian History. Currently she is studying the Hopi Tribe’s efforts during the twentieth century to reclaim control over their coal deposits and aquifers. Her dissertation research involves case studies of cultural artifacts returned to tribes under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990. 

Monica L. Butler is a Ph.D. candidate and her dissertation is entitled “Check Your Local Listings: Indigenous American Representation in Television,” to be completed in December 2008. This work explores the history of Native American images, Indigenous resistance to discrimination, and ways in which activists have represented themselves through American television. Her broader research and teaching interests include the historical social construction of race in both the United States and Southeast Asia, with an emphasis on activism.

Matthew Garrett earned his MA at the University of Nebraska in 2006 and completed a thesis centered on Kickapoo Indians' colonial diplomatic strategies.  He will complete coursework at ASU in 2008.  For his dissertation he expects to explore the impact of Christianity among Navajos.  Additional projects include minor contributions to an Omaha language lexicon, a study of recent Dakota family stresses and resilience patterns, and 19th century Mormon-Indian relations. 

Phillip “Cody” Marshall focuses his research on American Indian history with an emphasis placed on southwestern Indian communities.  His dissertation topic is a twentieth century history of the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, which is located within the City of Phoenix's Metropolitan Statistical Area.  The history will examine the unique challenges faced by an Indian community which is firmly located within a large urban area.

Stephanie AL Molholt is in her final year of the Ph.D. program at ASU.  She specializes in 20th century American Indian history with a focus on representation and Indigenous resistance.  Her dissertation is entitled "A Buck Well Spent: Representations of American Indians in Print Advertising since 1890.”

Azusa Ono is completing her doctoral dissertation, "Crossroads of Indian Country: Native American Community in Denver, 1950-2005."  She investigates the history of Native American community in Denver since the 1950s. Utilizing archival documents and oral histories, this research reveals how the Indian people have developed a unique urban Indian community in Denver, the city which has long been characterized as a crossroads of Indian Country. She plans to complete the dissertation in Spring 2008.

Tamrala Swafford, ABD, is currently completing her dissertation entitled, Gadugi and the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians: Environmental and Economic History, 1934-1984. This ethnohistorical study addresses the importance of gadugi as a sociocultural and economic institution that the Eastern Band of Cherokees has used in North Carolina. Combining ethnohistory and oral history, this analysis of archival research and interviews demonstrates how gadugi was used traditionally and by twentieth century Eastern Cherokees in their communities from 1934 to 1984 to become a successful and modern tribal government.

Tara Travis  is a Ph.D. candidate working on a dissertation titled,"Tsegi Dine: the Navajo community and landscape of Canyon de Chelly."  She has spent over 14 years living and working at Canyon de Chelly and continues to appreciate and learn from the local community and marvel at the beauty of the canyon landscape.  She is also a Public Historian and employed as an ethnohistorian in the Office of Indian Affairs, Intermountain Region, National Park Service. 

Graduate Student Alumni in American Indian History & Years of Graduation

Graduate students who have completed their degrees have gone on to revise their doctoral dissertations and turned them into books on a variety of topics in American Indian history. Some of these books are Valerie Mathes (1988), Helen Hunt Jackson and her Indian Reform Legacy; John Peterson (1993), Utah’s Black Hawk War; Larry Skogen (1993), Indian Depredation Claims, 1796-1920; Warren Metcalf (1995), Termination's Legacy: The Discarded Indians of Utah; and Scott Riney (1996), The Rapid City Indian School: 1898-1933.

Other books by former graduate students include, Timothy Braatz (1997), Surviving Conquest: A History of the Yavapai Peoples; Wade Davies (1998), Healing Ways: Navajo Health Care in the Twentieth Century; Gerald Betty (1999), Comanche Society Before the Reservation; and John Heaton (1999), The Shoshone-Bannocks: Culture & Commerce at Fort Hall, 1870-1940.

Since 1988, the graduate student alumni who hold 23 faculty positions are Paivi Hoikkala (1995) at California State University Poly in Pomona; Warren Metcalf (1995) at University of Oklahoma; Gretchen Harvey (1996) at Concordia College; Timothy Braatz (1997) at Saddleback College; Wade Davies (1998) at University of Montana; Gerald Betty (1999) at Angelo State College; and John Heaton (1999) at University of Alaska, Fairbanks.
Other alumni on faculty are William Carter (2000) at South Texas Community College; Jaakko Puisto (2000) at North Montana College and Montana State University; Rebecca Bales (2001) at California State University, Monterey Bay; Tracy Leavelle (2001) at Creighton University; Myla Vicenti Carpio (2001) at Arizona State University; Steve Amerman (2002) at Southern Connecticut State University; Daniel d’Oney (2002) at Albany College of Pharmacy; Jeff Shepherd (2002) at University of Texas at El Paso; Richard Kitchen (2002) at New Mexico Military Institute; Elizabeth James (2003) at University of Alaska, Anchorage; Victoria Smith at University of Nebraska, Lincoln; Andy Fisher (2003) at College of William and Mary; Scott White at Scottsdale Community College; Michael Lawson at Northland Pioneer College; Julie Davis (2004) at College of St. Benedict/St. John’s University; Kathy Rolison (2004) at Palomar College; Brian Collier (2006) at Grand Valley State University; Matthew Makley (2007) at Metropolitan State College; and Jay Precht (2007) on a three-year Postdoctoral Fellowship at McNeese State University.
John Peterson (1993) works as an archivist for the Church of the Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Archives; Larry Skogen (1993) is President of Pioneer State College in North Dakota; Mara Rutten (2000) works for the Federal Bureau of Investigation; Carol Behl (2001) is in Computer Science & Engineering at ASU; and Laurie Arnold (2005) is Assistant Director of the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts.

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