Jameson Sweet

Jameson Sweet is a historian and Indigenous Studies scholar whose research examines race, law, violence, and settler colonialism in the United States. He grounds his work in recognizing the inherent sovereignty of Indigenous nations and the maintenance and revitalization of Indigenous cultures, languages, and epistemologies. He received his Ph.D. in history from the University of Minnesota.  

Listen to Professor James Sweet on The Gilded Age and Progressive Era podcast as he joins two other experts, Dr. Cathleen Cahill (Associate Professor of History at Penn State University) and Dr. Boyd Cothran (Associate Professor of History at York University), in a roundtable on “Native American Studies Today.” 

The Gilded Age and Progressive Era is a free podcast about the seismic transitions that took place in the United States from the 1870s to 1920s.

Access the episode here.

Publications:

• “Makhóčhe Khípi: A Dakota Family Story of Race, Land, and Dispossession before the Dawes Act.” Chapter in Daniel Heath Justice and Jean M. O’Brien, eds., Allotment Stories: Indigenous Land Relations under Settler Siege (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2022): 104-16

• “Native Suffrage: Race, Citizenship, and Dakota Indians in the Upper Midwest,” Journal of the Early Republic 39, no. 1 (Spring 2019): 99-109

• "A Vast Indigenous World: Moving Away from Eurocentric Conceptions of North American History," forthcoming with Willam & Mary Quarterly

Media Appearances/Speaking Engagements:

• Participant in the panel "Celebrating Indigenous History and Culture," at the Inclusion Summit: Holding Space for Change, Rutgers 2022

• "Indigenous New Jersey: The Dispossession of Lenape Land," lecture given to several public libraries in New Jersey

• Roundtable participant, "The Indian Question: The History of Indigenous and Mixed-Race Indigenous People in the Early American Republic," at the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic Conference

Previous Organizations:

• Yale University

Accomplishments:

• Co-chair for "New Jersey Native American History and Life" Planning Committee, NJHC

• Teaching Award from the New Jersey Studies Academic Alliance for working teaching Indigenous New Jersey

• Working with Landscape Architecture scholars with an IDEA Innovation grant on the project, “Garden of Acknowledgement: Celebrating Native American History, Culture, and Continued Presence in New Jersey”

Upcoming Projects:

• Working with a non-profit organization, Buffalo Star People, to develop a Lakota and Dakota cultural repository

• Working with "Indigenous and Latinx Delaware" through their curriculum building initiative, working with K-12 teachers

I am most concerned with upholding the historical and ongoing sovereignty of Indigenous nations in the U.S.