Heather Menefee

Heather Menefee is completing her PhD in Native American and U.S. history at Northwestern University, where she is a Mellon Cluster Fellow in Native American and Indigenous Studies and a T.H. Breen Fellow in History. Her dissertation, “That We May Live Upon the Earth Again”: Kinship in Daḳota Maḳoc̣e, 1815-1939, demonstrates how conflicting settler and Dakota conceptualizations of kinship shaped the political development of the United States and the Dakota oyate (nation) throughout the nineteenth century and beyond.

Her research interests include transformations of Indigenous sovereignty and U.S. citizenship since the early nineteenth century, Dakota history, the relationship of federal Indian policy to U.S. imperialism, John Trudell’s political philosophy, and histories of the Great Lakes. In Fall 2025, she was a Graduate Fellow at the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research at Northwestern, where she continues to serve as an elected member of the Advisory Council. As a non-Native historian, Heather is committed to supporting the return of Dakota land and the health of the Dakota language. At NU, Heather has worked with the Taskforce on Indigenous and Endangered Languages to remove inequitable policies and support language reclamation.

Heather’s research has received support from many institutions and communities. From 2023-25, she was a Presidential Fellow at Northwestern, and in 2022-23, she was a Franke Graduate Fellow at the Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities. She has also previously worked as an archival intern with Dakhóta Iápi Okhódakičhiye and a teaching assistant for the Dakota Language Program at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities through the Institute for Advanced Study. Her research has been supported by the Chabraja Center for Historical Studies at NU, the Clements Center at SMU, the South Dakota State Historical Society, the Royster Society of Fellows at UNC – Chapel Hill, the Southeastern Women’s Studies Association, and many wonderful people who have shared their time and knowledge.

She earned an MA in American Studies at UNC Chapel Hill in 2019, and a BA (summa cum laude) from Northwestern in 2015 with an ad hoc major in Native American Studies.

Heather is happy to share resources with anyone involved in movements for justice, abolition, or language revitalization, on or beyond campus. She enjoys the White Sox, choral singing, studying languages, and befriending other people’s dogs. Heather’s family’s donkey (pictured) is named Jackson and lives in Georgia, where he protects cows from coyotes. She is thrilled to join the Richards Center as a postdoctoral fellow and welcomes anyone to reach out.