I'm an interdisciplinary scholar who draws on Native Studies, community-engaged, and ethnohistorical methodologies to narrate the Indigenous histories of California and the Southwest. My current book project, "Between the River and the Sea: Relational Sovereignty in California’s Native heartland, 1769-1931," reimagines the California interior as a Native heartland by exploring how the Cahuilla, Kuupangaxwicham, Kumeyaay, and Payómkawichum used relationships to sustain their sovereignty over the longue durée. These four Nations’ savvy diplomacy reveals that Native people, not missionaries or miners, shaped the region’s destiny over the long nineteenth century. This inheritance of power and resistance animates contemporary Native resurgences in California and North America more broadly. My work has been published in the William & Mary Quarterly and Ethnohistory, and my project has garnered the support of the Western History Association, Huntington Library, Newberry Library, John Carter Brown Library, and Beinecke Library. As a dissertation, "Between the River and the Sea" won the Frederick W. Beinecke Prize and was a finalist for the SHEAR Dissertation Prize. Before joining the faculty of UO, I spent two years with the Society of Fellows in the Humanities at USC.
I also seek to translate histories of Indigenous power into formats that serve contemporary Native sovereignty work. I'm currently collaborating with the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians to develop and implement archival trainings for Tribal Historic Preservation Officers and other Native cultural resource management professionals. While a researcher with the NYU-Yale American Indian Sovereignty Project, I partnered with Indigenous and non-Indigenous historians and law students to craft an amicus brief demonstrating a long history of state and federal involvement in Native child removal. The amicus brief helped buttress the Indian Child Welfare Act, which the U.S. Supreme Court’s consideration of the Brackeen v. Haaland case threw into jeopardy. I plan to continue deepen these partnerships with Native scholars and leadership at UO.
My courses center the experiences and histories of both Indigenous Nations crossed by the US-Mexico border, and Indigenous migrants in diaspora from across Latin America. I'm particularly passionate about teaching the Indigenous histories of California and the Southwest, where I grew up.
When I'm not writing or teaching, you'll probably catch me out on the trails or swinging around the climbing gym.
