AMHERST, Mass. — Frederick Hoxie, Swanlund Professor of History at the University of Illinois and this year’s Frost Library Fellow at Amherst College, will deliver two public lectures this month on the relationship between Native Americans and the United States.
Hoxie, a 1969 graduate of Amherst and former trustee for the college (2001–2007), will present “Native American Political Activists” on Friday, Oct. 14, and “American Indians and the United States: Prospects for Peace” on Sunday, Oct. 16. Both talks will be at 4 p.m. in the periodicals area on the first floor of the college’s Frost Library. The lectures are open to the general public.
Hoxie’s doctoral dissertation, which he wrote in 1977 at Brandeis University and published in 1984 as A Final Promise: The Campaign to Assimilate the Indians, remains the authoritative book on its topic. From 1984 to 1998, Hoxie was on the staff of Chicago’s Newberry Library, where he served as director of the D'Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies (1984 to 1994) and vice president for research and education (1994 to 1998). During that period, he edited Indians in American History: An Introduction and the Encyclopedia of North American Indians and wrote two books on the Crow Indians.
In 1990, Hoxie returned to Amherst as the John McCloy Lecturer. At that time, he delivered talks and assisted the Department of American Studies in launching a new course on “American Indian Histories and Cultures.” He has since returned to Five Colleges to lecture and present papers. As the current Frost Fellow, Hoxie will participate in classes and will research the life of Amherst College President Merrill Gates, who served as a member of the U. S. Board of Indian Commissioners from 1884 to 1901.
Hoxie has combined his scholarly activity with service as a government consultant, an expert witness on American Indian affairs and a consultant to several Native tribes. He is the co-author of The People: A History of Native America (2007), with Neal Salisbury of Smith College and David Edmunds of the University of Texas. He is currently writing a book on American Indian political activists, covering the years 1776 to 2000.