Zada Ballew

Biography

My research focuses on the formation of modern Native America within and beyond the Great Lakes region, and analyzes the role that Indigenous Women have played in maintaining old and establishing new kinship bonds across diasporic and settler-colonially-imposed cultural and physical borders. In particular, I am interested in how Bodéwadmik Kwéwêk (Potawatomi Women) have employed generational wisdom and contemporary adaptive resistance strategies to maintain their communities and strengthen trans-bandal/national ties across the Potawatomi Nation, a region and a people that span over four U.S. states, two countries, and one thousand miles. As an enrolled citizen of one of these bands, the Pokégnek Bodéwadmik (Pokagon Band of the Potawatomi Indians), my scholarship is informed by my ties to the community and is committed to ensuring that our ancestors’ contributions to our people, our band, our Nation, to the U.S., to Canada, and elsewhere are honored, analyzed, and not forgotten.

Education

B.A., Economics and Psychology, University of Notre Dame, 2019

Field

• U.S./North American History