Contact Information
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Biography
Rosalyn is an award winning Indigenous writer, environmental historian, and ethnobotanist. They work within Indigenous communities to revitalize traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and to strengthen public policy for Indigenous languages. They are the author of two books including Invisible Reality: Storytellers, Storytakers and the Supernatural World of the Blackfeet, produced two Blackfeet language lexicons, and written dozens of articles and commentaries. Rosalyn is an enrolled member of the Blackfeet Tribe of Montana and Métis.
To learn more about Rosalyn please see her personal website.
Research Interests
Indigenous Landscape Management Practices, Traditional Ecological Knowledge, Ethnobotany, Native American Relationships with the Natural World, Environmental Justice & Activism, and Native American/Indigenous History of Chicago.
Awards and Honors
Research Appointment:
Research Associate, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, 2025-2028.
Courses Taught
Rosalyn has over 25 years of teaching experience at research universities & Native American-controlled institutions at the undergraduate & graduate level.
Prospective students interested in American Indian, Native American & Indigenous History @ UIUC should also reach out to our cohort of Professors David R.M. Beck, Bob Morrissey, Yuri Ramírez & Jacki Rand.
Recent Projects
Rosalyn is currently working with the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, on a new exhibit on the American buffalo opening in 2026. They appeared in the PBS documentary The American Buffalo, by Ken Burns, and Dayton Duncan's companion book Blood Memory (Knopf, 2023). They were also interviewed by Judy Woodruff for their PBS NewsHour special American Buffalo: A Story of Resilience.
Highlighted Publications
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 & the Donald Fixico Book Award, Western History Association.
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.
Recent Publications
Rosalyn has written dozens of publicly engaged articles & commentaries, below are a selected publications on various topics.
Bison
"Indigenous Knowledge, Grasslands and Bison," PBS Media, 2023.
"Bison are Sacred to Native Americans," The Conversation, October 6, 2023.
Indigenous Knowledge & Sacred Landscapes
"Native Hawaiian Sacred Sites have been Damaged in the Lahaina Wildfires -- but, as an Indigenous Scholar Writes, Their Stories Will Live On," The Conversation, August 11, 2023. (Also translated into Spanish, "Los lugares sagrados de Hawái perdurarán a pesar de los incendios," The Conversation, August 11, 2023.)
“For Native Americans, A River is More Than a “Person; It is also a Sacred Place,” The Conversation on Water, edited by Andrea K. Gerlak, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023. (Reprint from The Conversation, October 8, 2017).
“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, Volume 28, Number 1, January 2023.
"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.
“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.
"The Legacy of Colonialism on Public Lands Created the Mauna Kea Conflict," High Country News, August 6, 2019.
For more please go to Rosalyn's website.
Contemporary Native American & Indigenous Issues
“My family lived the horrors of Native American boarding schools – why Biden’s apology doesn’t go far enough,” The Conversation, October 28, 2024.
"New Anti-Transgender Laws Will Hurt Indigenous Peoples' Rights and Religious Expression," The Conversation, June 1, 2023.
"Traditional Plant Knowledge is Not a Quick Fix," Interview with Regina Barber on NPR's Short Wave, November 8, 2022.
“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.
"How a Native American Coming-of-age Ceremony is Making a Comeback," The Conversation, February 10, 2020.
For more please go to Rosalyn's website.
Native American/Indigenous History of Chicago - Co-Produced Work
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 & paperback. (David is the sole author).
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.
“The Slow Violence of Natural History.” In The Future is Indigenous: Stories from the New Native North American Hall of the Field Museum, edited by Alaka Wali and Tom Skwerski. Colorado: Fulcrum Press, 2024.
“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.
“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.
For more please go to Rosalyn's website.
Community Engagement & Community Engaged Scholarship
Rosalyn co-founded Saokio Heritage a community-based organization led by Indigenous women, which works to revitalize Indigenous traditional ecological knowledge & ethnobotanical knowledge. They work with the National Coalition of Native American Language Schools and Programs to strengthen public policy for Indigenous languages and the National Native American Language Resource Center. They work with The Natural History Museum and projects like Unfence the Future & Red Natural History.
Museums & Public History
Rosalyn serves as an advisor to museums on public history projects, most recently with the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, the Field Museum of Natural History, and the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art.