Katrina Jagodinsky, Harold and Esther Edgerton assistant professor of history at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, will be the final speaker in the Women’s and Gender Studies Spring Colloquium Series. The lecture is 3:30 p.m. April 5 at the Nebraska Union, Colonial Room. A brief question and answer session will follow.
Jagodinsky’s talk, “Legal Codes and Talking Trees: Indigenous Women’s Sovereignty in the Sonoran and Puget Sound Borderlands, 1854-1946,” focuses on indigenous women of the Southwest and Pacific Northwest and the ways they dealt with the challenges posed by the existing legal regimes of the 19th and 20th centuries.
In most western states, it was difficult for Native women to inherit property, raise mixed-race children or take legal action in the event of rape or abuse. Through the experiences of six indigenous women who fought for personal autonomy and the rights of their tribes, Jagodinsky explores a long yet generally unacknowledged tradition of active critique of the U.S. legal system by female Native Americans.
