Jeffrey D. Means is an enrolled member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe and an Associate Professor and Department Head in Department of History at the University of Wyoming. He is also associated faculty in the Native American and Indigenous Studies Program. His primary areas of interest are Great Plains Indian culture and colonial cultural encounters as well as Oglala Lakota cultural history in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Dr. Means is currently working on his first book, which examines Oglala Lakota cultural transformations within a settler colonial framework. His study is centered on the evolution of Oglala political-economy as cattle replaced bison during the nineteenth and early twentieth century.
Means has won numerous academic awards and grants, including the first Power-Tanner Graduate Student Fellowship in American Indian Studies and the first NCAIS Faculty Fellowship at the Newberry Library.
Contact Information:
• jmeans4@uwyo.edu • 307-766-3198
Select Works:
Means, Jeffrey D. TED-Ed Co-Coordinator with Professor Ned Blackhawk, Yale University,
“The Dark History of Mount Rushmore,” December, 2021:
Means, Jeffrey D. with Melodie Starr Edwards, Podcast Interview for Wyoming Public Radio,
“The Great Dying: Shall Furnish Medicine Part 1,” 299 September 2021.
Means, Jeffrey D. with Amy Phillips, “Indian Wars,” Meeteetse Stories: A Podcast by Meeteetse Museum. November 2020.
Means, Jeffrey D. with Amy Phililps, “Native American Service Men and Women,” Meeteetse Stories: A Podcast by Meeteetse Museum. November 2020
Means, Jeffrey D. “The Sioux Bill of 1889- A Turning Point in Oglala Lakota Culture,” in 50 Events that Shaped American Indian History: An Encyclopedia of the American Mosaic, edited by Donna Martinez and Jennifer L. Williams Bordeaux. Westport Connecticut: Greenwood, 2016.
Means, Jeffrey D. “’Indians Shall Do Things in Common’: Oglala Lakota Identity and Cattle-Raising on the Pine Ridge Reservation.” Montana: The Magazine of Western History 61, no. 3 (2011): 3–21.
Means, Jeffrey D. “Oglala Paths, Oglala Choices: A Turning Point in Oglala Lakota Culture, The Sioux Bill of 1889,” in Our Way: A Parallel History, edited by Julie Cajune. Forthcoming in 2022 with Fulcrum Publishing. https://www.academia.edu/9029940/Oglala_Paths_Oglala_Choices.
Means, Jeffrey D. “The Loss of Paha Sapa: The Lakota Relationship with the Black Hills,” in Our Way: A Parallel History, edited by Julie Cajune. Forthcoming in 2022 with Fulcrum Publishing..https://www.academia.edu/9029947/The_Loss_of_Paha_Sapa.