American Indians and the American Dream: an author talk by Dr. Kasey Keeler
Schedule
Sat Mar 21 2026 at 11:00 am to 12:30 pm
UTC-05:00Location
2303 Third Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN, United States, Minnesota 55404 | Minneapolis, MN
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Join us on Saturday, March 21, 2026, for an author talk by Dr. Kasey R. Keeler on her first book, American Indians and the American Dream: Policies, Place, and Property in Minnesota, in which she examines the long history of urbanization and suburbanization of Indian communities in Minnesota, and through the United States. Beginning with the dispossession of Indian land, Dr. Keeler discusses the ways American Indian fought to maintain and acquire property rights, past and present, to secure home ownership and land for themselves, their families, and their communities. In doing so, she looks at the programs and policies that sought to move communities away from their traditional homelands to reservations and, later, to urban and suburban areas. In her talk she’ll share about the ways her research has expanded into her next book project on American Indians and the Homestead Act .Dr. Keeler’s presentation will conclude with a question/answer session with the audience.
Published in 2023 by the University of Minnesota Press, American Indians and the American Dream: Policies, Place, and Property in Minnesota investigates the ways American Indians accessed homeownership, working with and against federal policy, underscoring American Indian peoples’ unequal and exclusionary access to the way of life known as the American dream.
Dr. Kasey Keeler (Tuolumne Me-Wuk and Citizen Potawatomi) is an associate professor in the Department of Civil Society & Community Studies and the Director of the American Indian & Indigenous Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She was raised in Minnesota, having grown up in Coon Rapids, and has family in the north/west metro. She participated in the Ȟaȟá Wakpádaŋ / Bassett Creek Oral History Project that the museum co-sponsored in the summer of 2021. For that project, she interviewed 14 American Indian people from the West Metro whose tribal backgrounds included Dakota, Anishinaabe, Ho-Chunk, Assiniboine, Lakota, Odowa, Ponca, and Zuni. Click here to listen to the oral histories.
Book Cover courtesy of University of Minnesota Press.
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Where is it happening?
2303 Third Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN, United States, Minnesota 55404Event Location & Nearby Stays:
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