DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY

Interests

Geographic Field(s):  American History, Since 1900; American History, Before 1900

Thematic Field(s):  Legal and Criminal History; War and Empire in History; Political and Policy History

Principal Research Interest(s):  Native American History and Politics, Indigeneity, Settler Colonialism, 20th Century U.S., Global Indigenous Studies

Biography

Doug Kiel (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin–Madison, 2012) is a citizen of the Oneida Nation and studies Native American history, with particular interests in the Great Lakes region and twentieth century Indigenous nation rebuilding. He is working on a book manuscript entitled Unsettling Territory: Oneida Indian Resurgence and Anti-Sovereignty Backlash. The Oneida Nation of Wisconsin, a community that had been dispossessed of their New York homelands in the early nineteenth century, yet again suffered devastating land losses as a result of the Dawes Act of 1887—a policy that President Theodore Roosevelt once called “a mighty pulverizing engine to break up the tribal mass.” Kiel’s book examines how the Oneida Nation’s leaders strengthened the community’s capacity to shape their own future by envisioning, deliberating, and enacting a dramatic reversal of fortune during the twentieth century. His book also examines the origins of recent litigation between the Oneida Nation and the Village of Hobart, a mostly non-Native municipality that is located within the boundaries of the Oneida Reservation and seeks to block the tribe from recovering land that was lost a century ago. 

Prior to joining the Northwestern faculty, he taught at Williams College, Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Middlebury College. He is the recipient of grants and fellowships from the Ford Foundation, Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, the Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, the Newberry Library, and the School for Advanced Research (SAR) in Santa Fe, NM, among others.

Beyond the university, Kiel has worked in several museums, testified as an expert witness in regards to Indigenous land rights, and in 2008 was as an Indigenous Fellow at the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Geneva, Switzerland. He currently serves on the advisory committee for the renovation of the Field Museum’s exhibition on Native North America.

His publications are available to download. 

Affiliated Programs

• Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities
• Center for Native American and Indigenous Research
• Buffett Institute for Global Studies

Publications (Selected)

• “Oneida Nation v. Village of Hobart: Indigenous Land Recovery and Settler Resentment,” NAIS: Native American and Indigenous Studies, Vol. 6, No. 2 [accepted and forthcoming]
• “Bleeding Out: Histories and Legacies of ‘Indian Blood’,” in Blood Quantum and the Future of Native Nations (Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing, 2017), 80-97.
• Indigenous Midwests, Special Issue of Middle West Review, Vol. 2, No. 2 (2016), co-edited with James F. Brooks, including co-authored introduction “Reframing and Reclaiming Indigenous Midwests.”
• “Untaming the Mild Frontier: In Search of New Midwestern Histories,” Middle West Review, Vol. 1, No. 1 (2014): 9-38.
• “Competing Visions of Empowerment: Oneida Progressive-Era Politics and Writing Tribal Histories,” Ethnohistory, Vol. 61, No. 3 (2014): 419-444.
• “Rebuilding Indigenous Nations: Native American Activism and the Long Red Power Movement,” Expedition Magazine [University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology], Vol. 55, No. 3 (2013): 8-11.
• “The Erosion of the Middle Ground: Native Peoples of the Great Lakes Region after 1815,” in The War of 1812: Official National Park Service Handbook (Virginia Beach, VA: Donning Company Publishers, 2013), 136-146.

Teaching Interests

Courses Offered

• Introduction to Native American History
• Development of American Indian Law and Policy
• Red Power: Indigenous Resistance in the U.S. and Canada, 1887-Present
• Real Indians: Indigeneity, Authenticity, and Film
• Public History and Memory
• Race in the American Midwest
• Global Indigenous Histories

In the Media (Recent)

• Daniel Tucker, “Native People to Have Major Input Into Revamped Field Museum Exhibit,” WBEZ / NPR Chicago, October 31, 2018
• Lauren Frost, “Changing the Narrative In the Field Museum’s Native North American Hall,” WBEZ / NPR Chicago, October 29, 2018
• Becky Little, “Government Boarding Schools Once Separated Native American Children from Families,” History Channel Website, June 19, 2018
• Ryan Smith, “Are the Vinyard Indians the Rachel Dolezal of Native Tribes?” Chicago Reader, November 22, 2017
• “Best and Worst Presidents,” Native America Calling, February 15, 2016

Recent Awards and Honors

• Dorothy Schwieder Prize for Best Article in Midwestern History, "Untaming the Mild Frontier: In Search of New Midwestern Histories,” Middle West Review, Vol. 1, No. 1 (2014): 9-38.