American Indian and Indigenous Studies

The Land Beneath Our Feet: Indian Removal, Crimes of State, and Public Memory

In the 1830s, the United States carried out one of the first state-sponsored mass deportations of the modern era.  Claudio Saunt will describe how the United States expelled eighty thousand Native Americans from their homelands and explore how online mapping can reinscribe their presence on the land.

Claudio Saunt is the Richard B. Russell Professor in American History, Regents’ Professor, and Co-Director of the Center for Virtual History at the University of Georgia. He has written four books that explore Indigenous histories across North America. His most recent book, Unworthy Republic (2020), was awarded the Bancroft Prize, the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, the Ridenhour Book Prize, and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Saunt was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2022.