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--by Jennifer Graber

Session minutes of the Anadarko Presbyterian Church, founded in Indian Territory in 1889, referred to the “problem” of Native American church membership on the very first page. Rev. Silas Fait, along with an elder, examined an “Indian named Emma.” Though she “accept[ed] Christ,” the leaders rejected Emma’s application as she maintained that Christ could not “interfere with her own gods.” In the follow-up notes, Rev. Fait worried that “great harm will come to the mission if care is not exercised...

--by Nakia Parker

While investigating sources for a final paper in an undergraduate course on the American Civil War, I painfully discovered the history of American Indian participation in chattel slavery. Previously, I had viewed African Americans and Native Americans as identical comrades in the struggle against racism and oppression in this country. My desire to correct this thinking and contribute to the scholarship about the African American diaspora and the practice of chattel slavery in Southeastern Indian nations became the foundation for my current research...