Finding My Way to the Sinixt of Canada: A Research Journey
For more than 200 years, outsiders have chronicled the lives and lifeways of Sinixt people in this place currently known as Canada. Laurie Arnold (Sinixt) is an American historian studying these sources and trying to determine why Canada forgot and/or erased Sinixt from maps and memories.
Laurie is an enrolled citizen of the Sinixt Band of the Colville Confederated Tribes. She is a professor of history, director of Native American studies and the Robert K. and Ann J. Powers Chair of the Humanities at Gonzaga University.
Her book, Bartering with the Bones of Their Dead: The Colville Confederated Tribes and Termination, was published by the University of Washington Press in 2012. Her scholarship includes Colville author Mourning Dove, the Indigenous Columbia Plateau, Indian gaming, and her current research considers how contemporary Native American playwrights are using theatre to tell Native narratives of the past and present.
She holds a PhD in history from Arizona State University and a bachelor’s degree in history from Oregon State University.