History of Kaw Lake and Kaw Nation Lecture with Claire Cox

Join the Oklahoma Territorial Museum on Tuesday, August 11, at 7 p.m. for a lecture on the history of Kaw Lake and the Kaw Nation.

From 1940 to 1982, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built over 200 man-made lakes in Oklahoma. The fact that these lakes are relatively new to the region often escapes public memory, as does the idea that the federal government built each lake at a high ecological and social cost, requiring the destruction of ecosystems and the forced displacement of Native peoples. This presentation will focus on the history of Kaw Lake, located east of Ponca City, Oklahoma, which flooded the Kaw Nation’s reservation.

Speaker Bio

Claire Cox is a PhD student at the University of Oklahoma. Her research focuses on the 20th-century environmental and Indigenous history of the Great Plains. She earned her BA and MA in history from the University of Kansas. Claire also works at the Wakarusa River Valley Heritage Museum in Lawrence, Kansas, where she combined her research in a collaborative grant project that concluded with the installation of a permanent exhibit about the Kaw Nation.

The cost of the presentation will be $5 per person.

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed during the program do not necessarily represent those of the Oklahoma Historical Society.

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Host or Publisher Oklahoma Territorial Museum