Mattie Harper (2011-2012)

Mattie Harper (2011-2012) -(Bois Forte Band of Ojibwe):received her Ph.D in Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, with a designated emphasis in Women, Gender and Sexuality. Her dissertation, titled "French Africans in Indian Country," examines identify formation by focusing on four generations of one family in the Western Great Lakes region. Her work raises questions about the construction of race, Native American identity formation, and cross-cultural encounters in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Her main interests include: cross-cultural relations in Early North America, Ojibwe history, the intersecting lives of Native Americans and African Americans, 19th century U.S. history, the fur trade, racial intermarriage and the construction of race, and 20th century Native American intellectuals. She is now a University of California President's Postdoctoral Fellow at UC San Diego.