Biography
Rosalyn is an award winning Indigenous writer, environmental historian, and ethnobotanist. She works within Indigenous communities to revitalize traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), to address the growing climate crisis & environmental justice, and to strengthen public policy for Indigenous languages. She is the author of Invisible Reality: Storytellers,Storytakers and the Supernatural World of the Blackfeet. Rosalyn is an enrolled member of the Blackfeet Tribe of Montana and Métis.
Research Interests
Indigenous Knowledge, Traditional Ecological Knowledge, Indigenous Food Systems, Ethnobotany, Environmental Justice, Indigenous Activism, Sacred Landscapes, Native American Religion & Religious Practice.
Awards and Honors
Research Appointment:
Research Associate, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, 2021-2024.
Fellowship:
Luce/American Council of Learned Societies, Religion, Journalism & International Affairs Fellowship, 2020-2021, & 2023.
Courses Taught
Rosalyn has 20 years of teaching experience at research universities and Native American-controlled institutions. She has served as a visiting professor at the Harvard Divinity School. She teaches courses that focus on environmental issues within Indigenous communities and Native American history at the undergraduate and graduate level.
Prospective students interested in American Indian, Native American & Indigenous History @ UIUC should also reach our cohort of Professors David R.M. Beck, Bob Morrissey, Yuri Ramírez & Jacki Rand.
Museums & Public History
Rosalyn serves as an advisor to museums on public history projects, including most recently with the Field Museum of Natural History, the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art and the Smithsonian Folklife "Living Religion" Festival. Rosalyn serves as a Research Associate with the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution.
Community-Based Action & Activism
Rosalyn is a co-founder of Saokio Heritage, a community-based organization, led by Indigenous women that works to ‘honor our ancestors knowledge.’ Saokio Heritage holds presentations and workshops to share and educate about ethnobotany, traditional Indigenous food systems and traditional ecological knowledge.
Highlighted Publications
Sacred Landscapes & Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge
Professor Rosalyn LaPier (Blackfeet/Métis) has researched and written award-winning history of Sacred Landscapes & Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge for over a decade. Below are some of their publications -- these are great resources for community, parents, teachers & scholars:
“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, (expected January 2023).
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 and Donald Fixico Book Award, Western History Association.
"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. Finalist for Best Western Short Nonfiction, Western Writers of America.
“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.
Ethnobotany & Contemporary Public Health
“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.
Indigenous Chicago History
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. Scheduled for paperback in 2023
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.
“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. Finalist for several awards.
“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.
More Writing
To see more of Rosalyn LaPier's written work please go to their website.
