OAH Distinguished Lecturer Profile
Fred Hoxie is a professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he was formerly the Swanlund Professor of History, Law, and American Indian Studies. An elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he has served as a consultant both to Indian tribes and government agencies. His current research focuses on American Indian and indigenous political activism in the United States and beyond. His publications include A Final Promise: The Campaign to Assimilate the Indians (1984); Parading Through History: The Making of the Crow Nation in America, 1805-1935 (1995); Talking Back to Civilization: Indian Voices from the Progressive Era (2001); The People: A History of Native America (2007), with David Edmunds and Neal Salisbury; Lewis and Clark and the Indian Country (2007), with Jay Nelson; This Indian Country: American Indian Political Activists and the Place They Made (2012), which won the Western History Association's Caughey Prize, and The Oxford Handbook of American Indian History (2016).
From their first encounters with European travelers, Native Americans sought to describe themselves to the newcomers and, when possible, to help them understand the humanity of indigenous peoples. They eventually succeeded in that effort, but it took centuries. This lecture explores the many ways Indian leaders used words to combat colonialism and oppression.
