Stu Levitan welcomes UW history professor Stephen Kantrowitz, whose new book should be of special interest to those of us here in Teejop, it’s Citizens of a Stolen Land: A Ho-Chunk History of the 19^th Century United States from the good people at the University of North Carolina Press.

If you are like most Americans with an immigrant background, you probably think citizenship is a good thing, because it confers rights and privileges. But for Native Americans in the 19^th century, it was something quite different – it was a way to destroy their collectivist culture and ultimately steal their land. Until some Native peoples – notably the Ho-Chunk – figured out how to use citizenship and private property rights to reclaim land and preserve their identity. The Ho-Chunk story in the Removal Era is one of both settler/colonial violence and conquest, but also one of Ho-Chunk resistance, persistence, and return.

It is a story Stephen Kantrowitz is very qualified to tell. He is the Plaenert-Bascom and Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is also an affiliate faculty member in American Indian Studies and Afro-American Studies at UW-Madison, where he teaches courses on race, indigeneity, politics, and citizenship. His previous books are More Than Freedom: Fighting for Black Citizenship in a White Republic, 1829-1889 (Penguin, 2012) and Ben Tillman and the Reconstruction of White Supremacy (UNC Press, 2000). And of particular interest to me, he co-chaired with Dr Floyd Rose, president of 100 Black Men of Madison, the chancellor’s committee in 2018 that produced a very knowledgeable and nuanced report on KKK on campus.

It's a pleasure to welcome to Madison BookBeat UW Professor Stephen Kantrowitz.