Congratulations to Jennifer O’Neal (Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde), Corrigan Solari University Historian and Archivist, for being awarded the Henry Roe Cloud Dissertation Writing Fellowship at Yale University! Sponsored by the Yale Group for the Study of Native America (YGSNA), the Henry Roe Cloud Dissertation Writing Fellowship in American Indian and Indigenous Studies has helped to develop American Indian Studies at Yale by facilitating the completion of the doctorate by scholars working on pressing issues related to the American Indian experience and Indigenous Studies. The Fellowship supports a graduate scholar in any doctoral field for the 2018-2019 academic year to work toward completion of the dissertation during the fellowship year.

The Henry Roe Cloud Fellowship honors the legacy of Henry Roe Cloud, a member of the Winnebago Nation of Nebraska and graduate of Yale College, 1910.  A tireless critic of federal Indian assimilation programs and a proponent of increased educational opportunities for American Indians, Roe Cloud transformed American Indian higher education through his leadership of the Society of American Indians, his founding of the American Indian Institute, and as co-author of “The Problem of Indian Administration,” commonly known as “The Meriam Report,” an extensive survey made at the request of Secretary of the Interior that detailed the appalling failures of federal Indian policy in the early twentieth century.  This survey, presented to Congress in 1928, helped to set in motion many of the subsequent reforms of the Indian New Deal.

The fellow will work in close affiliation with the Ethnicity, Race, and Migration Program and will have access to Yale’s exceptional research libraries. The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, in addition to its premier collection of Western Americana, also holds the papers of many important American Indian writers, including Joseph Bruchac, Leslie Marmon Silko, N. Scott Momaday, Gerald Vizenor, and James Welch, as well as those of important policy makers such as Felix Cohen and Richard Henry Pratt. Manuscripts and Archives at Sterling Memorial Library holds the papers of John Collier and Henry Roe Cloud.

The Roe Cloud Fellow will also have the opportunity to participate in the activities of the recently established Yale Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration (RITM). The Center supports research and teaching on race, indigenous studies, and migration by advancing interdisciplinary research and teaching on these topics at Yale; connecting faculty members, students, existing research efforts, administrative units, and relevant courses of study in new and innovative ways; and promoting collaborations between members of the Yale Community and beyond, through partnerships with local, national, and international institutions, organizations, and individuals. Other opportunities include activities at the Howard R. Lamar Center for the Study of Frontiers and Borders; the Native American Cultural Center; as well as the YGSNA working group. Formed in 2003 to bring together the intellectual community at Yale working in the area of Native American Studies, YGSNA organizes bi-monthly workshops throughout the academic year as well as related academic events on campus. (http://ygsna.sites.yale.edu)

Jennifer will work toward completing her dissertation in history from Georgetown University that focuses on an interdisciplinary approach to the examination of the social, political, and historical intersections of Native American transnational activism within the late twentieth century, centered within the field of indigenous studies and foreign relations.