Dine & Dialogue – The Iron Horse in Indian Country: Native Americans and Railroads in the US West
Historians have long pondered the railroad’s profound and far-reaching role in transforming the United States’ economic, political, social, and physical landscapes. Join Dr. Alessandra La Rocca Link in a dynamic discussion with Filson President and CEO, Dr. Patrick Lewis, as they examine the relationships between Indigenous peoples and railroads that unfolded in the American West during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Iron Horse in Indian Country reframes this scholarship by spotlighting both the inner workings of railroad colonialism and how Indigenous peoples incorporated railroads into their own networks.
This project begins with a study of Indigenous contributions to the Pacific Railway Surveys of the 1850s and extends through to the rise of automobile travel and the passage of the Indian Citizenship Act in the 1920s.
Alessandra La Rocca Link is a Louisville native and teaches at the Upper School at Louisville Collegiate School. She holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of Colorado Boulder and was a fellow at the Clements Center for Southwest Studies at Southern Methodist University.
