September 26, 2001

Contact: Mary Jane Dunlap, University Relations, (785) 864-8853.

Fixico's Oct. 2 lecture to focus on new perspectives of American Indian history

LAWRENCE -- Donald L. Fixico, Bowlus distinguished professor in American Indian history at the University of Kansas, will present his inaugural lecture on "The Future of American Indian History," at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 2, in Alderson Auditorium of the Kansas Union. The public lecture is free.

"More than 30,000 books have been written about the American Indian," Fixico notes. Much of that work has been written from the perspective of Indian and non-Indian interaction. His lecture will focus on new scholarship from the American Indian perspective.

"This is new ground for most people. The history of American Indians is more than wars and battlefields or the noble savage," Fixico notes. He is interested in "what happens when one enters another culture, intermingles and becomes a part of the other culture."

Fixico has completed a book manuscript titled, "The American Indian and History: Native Reality and Indigenous Ethos." His lecture will review some of that research.

Fixico joined KU's faculty in January 1999 to be the first director of KU's Indigenous Nations Studies Program, a master's level program developed in cooperation with Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence. The KU program enrolls about 16 students and encourages research into the traditions, diversity, cultural survival and aspirations for self-determination of American Indians. The program also helps train students for leadership and policy-making roles in indigenous communities, in higher education, and in state, national and international organizations.

Under Fixico's direction, KU's program has received a $75,000 research grant from the National Association of Tribal Historic Preservation Officers in Washington, D.C., to analyze treaties involving Department of Defense installations throughout Indian country. Last fall, the KU indigenous nations studies program sponsored a national conference on American Indian leadership and launched the first issue of a new publication, the Indigenous Nations Studies Journal, edited by Fixico.

In January 2000, Fixico received the first CLAS Scholar award offered to faculty in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at KU. In April, KU Provost David Shulenburger announced that Fixico is KU's first Thomas M. Bowlus distinguished professor in American history.

Last fall, President Bill Clinton appointed Fixico to the national advisory council for the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Fixico is the author of six books on 19th- and 20th-century Native American history, including "The Urban Indian Experience in America," "The Invasion of Indian Country in the 20th Century: American Capitalism and Tribal Natural Resources," "Urban Indians," "Termination and Relocation: Federal Indian Policy, 1945-1960," "Rethinking American Indian History" and "An Anthology of Western Great Lakes Indian History."

Born in Shawnee, Okla., Fixico is a full-blood American Indian of the Shawnee, Sac and Fox, Muscogee Creek and Seminole Indian nations. After earning a Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma, Fixico received postdoctoral fellowships at the University of California-Los Angeles American Indian Studies Center and the D'Arcy McNickle Center for the History of the American Indian at the Newberry Library, Chicago.

Fixico taught previously at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. He has taught abroad as an exchange professor at the University of Nottingham in England and a visiting professor at the John F. Kennedy Institute at Freie University in Berlin.

The new professorship was established through a gift to KU from the estate of the late Thomas M. and Elva Ottman Bowlus. The Kansas University Endowment Association manages the gift fund.

The renewable professorship includes an annual $10,000 salary stipend and a $5,000 research fund, for a minimum of five years. In addition to the professorship, the Bowluses' gift supports fellowships for students in the Indigenous Nations Studies Program and supports areas such as scholarships for Haskell Indian Nations University students who want to attend KU.

Thomas Bowlus was a 1936 Coffeyville Junior College graduate and a 1938 graduate in finance at KU. After serving with the U.S. Air Force in World War II and receiving three bronze stars, he began a 38-year career with Smith Barney, then known as Harris Upham. He was vice president and manager of Smith Barney in Bartlesville, Okla., before retiring in 1986. He died in 1999. A native of Kansas City, Mo., Elva Bowlus received a bachelor's degree from KU in 1940. She worked as a dietician in St. Louis and in Kansas City before marrying Thomas Bowlus in 1949. She died in November 1999.