Scholar to Explore ‘Plains Indian Cultures, Politics, Economics, and Oil’
Event Information
Time: 7:30 p.m.
Date: Tuesday, Oct. 30
Place: Room 101 of the Joe Rosenfield ’25 Center, 1115 Eighth Ave.
The talk is titled “The Wealth of the Black Snake: Plains Indian Cultures, Politics, Economics, and Oil.” It is based on research Braun has been conducting since 2011 at the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota. Construction of the $3.78 billion Dakota Access Pipeline from the Bakken shale oil fields to Patoka, Illinois, is moving forward despite protests led by First Nation people. Native concerns about the pipeline threatening sacred burial grounds, as well as water quality, have been ignored.
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Speaker Bio
Sebastian Braun, associate professor of American Indian studies and anthropology, became director of the American Indian Studies Program at Iowa State University in 2015. He holds a master’s degree in ethnology, history and philosophy from the University of Basel in Switzerland and an M.A. and Ph.D. in anthropology from Indiana University. Prior to joining Iowa State, Braun taught in the Department of American Indian Studies at the University of North Dakota.
His research interests are at the intersections of culture, ecology, economics and politics (with strong interests in language, kinship and meaning). His studies also focus on a comparative analysis of natural resource extraction in rural communities. He co-founded the American Indian Studies — Great Plains Consortium. Among other publications, he is the author of "Buffalo Inc. American Indians and Economic Development" and the editor of Transforming Ethnohistories. Narrative, Meaning and Community.