Indigenous Peoples of the Globe: Colonization and Adaptation

November 13 & 14, 2009

The 34th annual Great Lakes History Conference, sponsored by Grand Valley State University’s History Department, will be held in Grand Rapids, Michigan on November 13 & 14, 2009.  The theme is “Indigenous Peoples of the Globe: Colonization and Adaptation.”

 We are pleased to welcome Mr. Sherman Alexie and Dr. Ned Blackhawk as our keynote speakers.

Mr. Sherman Alexie will be speaking on Friday evening, November 13, 2009.  Mr. Alexie is an author, poet, and screenwriter.  He was named one of The New Yorker’s 20 Top Writers for the 21^st Century.  The New York Times Book Review described him as “one of the major lyric voices of our time.”  Men’s Journal called him “the world’s first fast-talking and wisecracking mediagenic American–Indian superstar.”  He has written several books including Reservation Blues, Indian Killer, The Toughest Indian in the World, Ten Little Indians, Flight, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian, and The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.  He wrote and co-produced the film, Smoke Signals.  He made his directorial debut with The Business of Fancydancing, and he is currently working on a screenplay entitled The Toughest Indian in the World.

Dr. Ned Blackhawk is a professor of History and American Studies at Yale University. He holds graduate degrees in history from the University of  Washington and the University of California, Los Angeles.  He is the author of the award-winning study Violence over the Land: Indians and Empires in the early American West.  Professor Blackhawk has written and lectured widely on issues regarding American Indian history. An enrolled member of the Te-Moak Tribe of Western Shoshone Indians of Nevada, he taught for ten years at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, before joining the faculty at Yale.

Dr. Blackhawk has won the following awards for his book Violence over the Land:

2006 William P. Clements Prize for the Best Non-Fiction Book on Southwestern America

2007 Frederick Jackson Turner Award, Organization of American Historians

2007 Robert M. Utley Award, sponsored by the Western History Association

2007 Erminie Wheeler-Voegelin Book Award, American Society of Ethnohistory

2007 Lora Romero First Book Publication Prize, American Studies Association

2008 John C. Ewers Western History Association Prize

Conference headquarters will be at Grand Valley State University’s L.V. Eberhard Center in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  Hotel accommodations will be available at the Days Hotel of Grand Rapids which is across from the L.V. Eberhard Center. The conference is within easy walking distance to museums and restaurants.  Grand Rapids is served by most major and regional airlines.