Knowledge of American Indian history is integral to understanding U.S. history, according to Dr. Alyssa Mt. Pleasant, an assistant professor of American studies and history at Yale University.

Mt. Pleasant is a member of the Tuscarora tribe, part of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy in New York. She taught courses at Yale as a fellow in 2005 and was hired as an assistant professor in the American studies department in July 2006. She is the first person to teach courses expressly designated as American Indian history at Yale.

“I don’t think we can understand how we got to where we are as a nation without an understanding of American Indian history,” she says.

Mt. Pleasant’s doctoral dissertation examined the social, political and religious dynamics of the Seneca tribe’s Buffalo Creek Reservation in New York state. Her current research focuses on the ways in which tribes negotiated the European colonial occupation of their lands.

In addition to being the recipient of numerous fellowships, Mt. Pleasant is a two-time recipient of the Dean David L. Call Achievement Award from Cornell. Her essay, “‘We Have Taken it Coolly into Consideration:’ Debating Missionary Presence at Buffalo Creek,” will be published by Penn State Press in a collection of essays about early, modern Native-missionary relations.

According to Mt. Pleasant, academic interest in American Indian history has grown in recent years.

“Since the 1990s, the discipline has really started to take off,” she says. “As senior Native American historians continue to teach younger scholars, we are seeing an organic growth in Native American studies and history.”

Adding credence to her argument is the fact that elite institutions like Yale are hiring more Native academics. Earlier this summer, Yale announced the hiring of Navajo tribe member Shelley Lowe, who will be the first assistant dean for Native American affairs. Mt. Pleasant says she’s pleased that Yale is recognizing the significant growth of American Indian history programs.