In this lecture, Alan Shane Dillingham will share stories from his current book project, which traces the lives of his ancestors who were forcibly removed from Choctaw traditional lands in the 1830s on what came to be known as the Trail of Tears. Using family history, Dillingham will discuss how Indian Territory, modern-day Oklahoma, allows us to explore the intertwined processes of Native dispossession and racial slavery. 

Biography: Dr. Alan Shane Dillingham (Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma) is a historian and author of the award-winning book, Oaxaca Resurgent: Indigeneity, Development, and Inequality in Twentieth-Century Mexico. He currently serves as an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellow at Stanford University's Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioural Sciences and is an associate professor of history at Arizona State University's School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies and. His writing has been featured in The Washington Post, NACLA Report, Animal Político, and Jacobin.