Friday, 11 November 2016—12:00 noon—WAG 316

Erika Bsumek, UT

“Navajo Sandstone: Herbert Gregory and Geological Naming Practices on the Colorado Plateau”

The practice of drawing upon Native American knowledge to explore Indian lands was one that corresponded with the taking of Native American lands. Southwestern expeditions were no exception. As in other cases, settler societies attempted to control representations of the Indians’ past in order to lay claim to land, environmental and economic resources, and cultural identity.  While much has been written about encounters between the military and American Indian peoples in the Southwest between the 1840s and early 1890s, this presentation will focus on the actions and writings of Herbert E. Gregory. As a geologist, Gregory produced studies of the region with an eye toward the future of hydrological development. The presentation will focus on how Gregory relied on indigenous knowledge even as the policies he and the USGS would pursue would eventually alienate Indians—both physically and metaphorically—from the very landscape that mapped their history, housed their ancestors, explained their world view, and shaped their identity.


Erika Bsumek is an associate professor of History at UT. Her first book, Indian-made: Navajo Culture in the Marketplace, 1848-1860  was published by University Press of Kansas in 2008, and she coedited Nation States and the Global Environment: New Approaches to International Environmental History, published by Oxford University Press in 2013. Her current research explores the social and environmental history of the area surrounding Glen Canyon on the Utah/Arizona border from the 1840s to the present.