"Nineteenth-Century Fort Peck Assiniboine Cultural Persistence," is the title of the March Paul A. Olson Seminar in Great Plains Studies.
Dennis Smith, associate professor of History and Native American studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, will discuss Fort Peck Assiniboine stories at a Paul A. Olson Seminar in Great Plains Studies at 3:30 p.m. March 14 in the Great Plains Art Museum, 1155 Q St.
Smith is an enrolled Assiniboine member from the Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux Reservation from Montana. He earned his doctorate at UNL and served as Indian Studies director and professor at Morningside College in Sioux City, Iowa, before moving to UNO.
Smith is a coauthor of "The History of the Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes of the Fort Peck Indian Reservation, Montana, 1800-2000" (Montana Historical Society Press, 2008). Written by five scholars of Native American studies, many of whom are native themselves, the narrative tracks the tribes from pre-contact with whites through the brutal early reservation period, two world wars, the turbulent 1960s, and into the 21st century. Drawn mostly from primary sources, including federal archives and private materials, the book is a benchmark in the publication of tribal histories with a native point of view.
This is the third seminar in a series chosen to complement the March 28-30 symposium, "1862-2012: The Making of the Great Plains," sponsored by the Center for Great Plains Studies at UNL in collaboration with Homestead National Monument of America, National Park Service.
Sponsored by the Center for Great Plains Studies, the seminars are free and open to the public. For more information, go to http://www.unl.edu/plains or call 402-472-3082.
— Linda Ratcliffe, Center for Great Plains Studies