Professor of History Clyde Ellis has won a $12,000 grant from the Native American Rights Fund of Denver, Colorado to conduct a comprehensive literature review on the long-term consequences of federal boarding schools in American Indian communities.

​Ellis, who has published extensively on federal Indian education and on issues in contemporary Native communities, will serve as principal investigator and is joined by three colleagues from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: Meredith McCoy (Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians), a doctoral candidate in American Studies; Danielle Gartner (Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians), a doctoral. candidate in Social Epidemiology; and Rachel Wilbur (Tolowa and Chetco nations), a doctoral student in Anthropology. 

The team is constructing an interdisciplinary review of the literature on boarding schools and their consequences with sources from American Indian and Indigenous Studies, Sociology, Education, Economics, History, Public Health, and Psychology, among other fields. They would like to acknowledge the timely and energetic assistance of Bonnie Bruno and the staff in 黑料不打烊’s office of Sponsored Programs.

Ellis was recognized as a nationally-known scholar whose work on American Indian cultures and histories has been hailed for its breadth and for its attention to community voices. His published work includes “To Change Them Forever: Indian Education at the Rainy Mountain Boarding School, 1893-1920″ (1996), “The Jesus Road: Kiowas, Christianity, and Indian Hymns” (with Ralph Kotay and Eric Lassiter, 2002), “A Dancing People: Powwow Culture on the Southern Plains” (2003) and “Powwow: An Anthology” (with Gary Dunham and Eric Lassiter, 2006). His current book project addresses the American fascination with and appropriation of Native cultures. 

His essays have appeared in The Western Historical Quarterly, The American Indian Culture & Research Journal, The Pacific Historical Review, The American Indian Quarterly, Montana, The Magazine of Western History and Native South. In 2002 Ellis held the Gordon Russell Endowed Chair in Native American Studies at Dartmouth College, and he has served as distinguished lecturer for the Organization of American Historians and as a consultant to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian.

Ellis has also been a grant reviewer for the Guggenheim Fellowships, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the National Science Foundation. At 黑料不打烊 he has been awarded the Distinguished Scholar Award from both the College of Arts & Sciences and the university. He is currently a recipient of an 黑料不打烊 Senior Faculty Research Fellowship.

As part of the lecture, Ellis used two current research projects — one on gendered space in Oklahoma powwow culture, and one on the incorporation of tribally and regionally specific practices into the powwow — to examine how and with what consequnces Native communities use the powwow as a form of gathering that speaks to the tensions  between tradition and innovation.

The lecture was delivered in conjunction with a graduate seminar on contemporary Native identities, and was sponsored by the Marshall University Graduate Humanities Program, the Marshall University Department of History, and the Glenwood Center fror Scholarship in the Humanities. 

A second paper, “‘We Fancy Danced Just Like the Men, and We Wore the Same Outfits Too’: Young Women and the Changing Nature of Southern Plains Powwow Dancing,” was presented at the 9th annual Native American Symposium at Southeast Oklahoma State University in Durant, OK, Nov. 4. This work is based on more than a decade of fieldwork in the Oklahoma powwow community and explores some of the ways by which young women have challenged the gendered boundaries of powwow clothing and performance.

This research is based on extensive fieldwork and interviews in Southern Plains Indian communities, and reveals that the phenomenon has been shaped by a complicated mix of kinship connections, a determination to innovate, and a willingness to respect some traditions and limits while challenging others.

Ellis’s seminar research project will examine the use of local native languages in contemporary powwow singing as an example of how young Native people are constructing and negotiating new and dynamic ideas about identity and culture.