Rosalyn LaPier is an enrolled member of the Blackfeet Tribe of Montana and Métis. She is a Professor in History at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. Her work focuses on the revitalization of Indigenous & traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), environmental justice and the climate crisis, and strengthening public policy for Indigenous languages. You can learn more about La Pier’s work at her website: rosalynlapier.com
LaPier is the author of two award-winning books, including Invisible Reality: Storytellers, Storytakers, and the Supernatural World of the Blackfeet (2017). This book presents a vital look at Blackfeet history and the traditional belief that Blackfeet made nature adapt to them. She is also the coauthor of City Indian: Native American activism in Chicago, 1893-1934 (2015) with David Beck, which tells the story of American Indian men and women who migrated to Chicago from across America in the time period of 1893 to 1934, and reconstructs their political, social, and educational activism.
LaPier co-founded Saokio Heritage, a community-based organization, which serves as a platform to amplify the voices of Indigenous women activists & writers. She also serves on the board of the National Coalition of Native American Language Schools and Programs, believing that embedded within Indigenous languages is a community’s environmental knowledge. In the past she previously worked at the Piegan Institute, a private non-profit on the Blackfeet reservation working to revitalize the Blackfeet language.
Contact Information:
• Rosalyn.lapier@mso.umt.edu • 406-243-6787
Select Recent Works:
Books
Invisible Reality: Storytellers,Storytakers and the Supernatural World of the Blackfeet, University of Nebraska Press, 2017. Available as an e-book & paperback. Winner of the John C. Ewers Book Award & the Donald Fixico Book Award, Western History Association.
City Indian: Native American Activism in Chicago, 1893-1934, by Rosalyn LaPier & David R.M. Beck, University of Nebraska Press, 2015. Available as an e-book & paperback. Winner of the Robert G. Athearn Book Award, Western History Association.
Bison
“Indigenous Knowledge, Grasslands and Bison,” PBS Media, 2023.
“Bison are Sacred to Native Americans,” The Conversation, October 6, 2023.
Sacred Landscapes & Indigenous Knowledge
“Native Hawaiian Sacred Sites have been Damaged in the Lahaina Wildfires — but, as an Indigenous Scholar Writes, Their Stories Will Live On,” The Conversation, August 11, 2023. (Also translated into Spanish, “Los lugares sagrados de Hawái perdurarán a pesar de los incendios,” The Conversation, August 11, 2023.)
“For Native Americans, A River is More Than a “Person; It is also a Sacred Place,” The Conversation on Water, edited by Andrea K. Gerlak, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023. (Reprint from The Conversation, October 8, 2017).
“Land as Text: Reading the Land,” in the “Forum on Narrative and Environmental Justice” with essays by Connie Chiang, Tiya Miles, and Lauret Savoy, edited by Mart Stewart, Environmental History, Volume 28, Number 1, January 2023.
“Native Americans’ Decades-long Struggle for Control Over Sacred Lands is Making Progress,” The Conversation, September 30, 2022.
“Ella Mad Plume Yellow Wolf Photographs by a Native American Woman in the Early 1940s,” Montana The Magazine of Western History, Winter 2021/22.
“New Wave of Anti-Protest Laws May Infringe on Religious Freedoms for Indigenous Peoples,” The Conversation, July 12, 2021.
“Mountaintop Removal Threatens Traditional Blackfoot Territory,” High Country News, February 1, 2021.
“The Legacy of Colonialism on Public Lands Created the Mauna Kea Conflict,” High Country News, August 6, 2019.
For more please go to Rosalyn’s website.
Contemporary Indigenous Issues
“My family lived the horrors of Native American boarding schools – why Biden’s apology doesn’t go far enough,” The Conversation, October 28, 2024.
“New Anti-Transgender Laws Will Hurt Indigenous Peoples’ Rights and Religious Expression,” The Conversation, June 1, 2023.
“Traditional Plant Knowledge is Not a Quick Fix,” Interview with Regina Barber on NPR’s Short Wave, November 8, 2022.
“For Indigenous Peoples, Abortion is a Religious Right,” with Abaki Beck, Aftermath: Life in a Post-Roe America, edited by Elizabeth Hines, October, 2022. Pp. 126-130. (Reprint from Yes! Magazine, June 30, 2022.)
“For Indigenous People, Abortion is a Religious Right,” with Abaki Beck, Yes! Magazine, June 30, 2022.
“Misrepresenting traditional knowledge during COVID-19 is dangerous,” with Abaki Beck, High Country News, March 23, 2020.
“How a Native American Coming-of-age Ceremony is Making a Comeback,” The Conversation, February 10, 2020.
For more please go to Rosalyn’s website.
Native American History of Illinois & Chicago – Co-Produced Work
Professors Rosalyn LaPier (Blackfeet/Métis) & David R.M. Beck have researched and written award-winning history of Native American and Indigenous peoples of Chicago for over a decade. Below are some of their individual and co-produced publications — they are great resources for community, parents, teachers & scholars:
UnFair Labor? American Indians and the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. by David R.M. Beck. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2019. Available as an e-book & paperback. (David is the sole author).
City Indian: Native American Activism in Chicago, 1893-1934, by Rosalyn LaPier & David R.M. Beck, University of Nebraska Press, 2015. Available as an e-book & paperback.
“American Indians Moving to Cities,” by Rosalyn LaPier & David R.M. Beck in Why You Can’t Teach U.S. History Without American Indians, edited by Susan Sleeper-Smith, Juliana Barr, Jean M. O’Brien, Nancy Shoemaker, and Scott Stevens, University of North Carolina, 2015. Available as an e-book & paperback. Pp. 210-26.
“‘One Man Relocation Team:’ Scott Henry Peters and American Indian Migration in the 1930’s,” by Rosalyn LaPier & David R.M. Beck, Western Historical Quarterly, 45:1, Spring 2014. Pp. 17-36.
“Crossroads for a Culture: American Indians in Progressive Era Chicago,” by Rosalyn LaPier & David R.M. Beck, Chicago History, 38:1, Spring 2012. Pp. 22-43.
The Chicago American Indian community, 1893-1988: Annotated Bibliography and Guide to Sources in Chicago. by David Beck, preface by Sol Tax, forward by Faith Smith. Chicago: NAES College Press; 1988.
For more please go to Rosalyn’s website.