CEMH Digital Talk: Jacob Jurss (Department of History, Metropolitan State University)

Title: "Shifting Alliances and Shifting Environments: A Panorama of 1720 Anishinaabeg-Dakota Relations"

Abstract: In 1720, despite French claims, European presence in the region we now call Minnesota were weak. Far more important for understanding this place and moment were the Indigenous borderlands that existed between the Dakota and the Ojibwe whose villages were steadily moving westward onto the homelands of the Dakota. Often depicted as hereditary enemies, this lecture will explore a relationship that existed between 1679 and 1737 that is far more complex than traditionally depicted and how that relationship continues to have influence on the contemporary moment.

Bio: Dr. Jacob Jurss received his Ph.D. in American history from Michigan State University. His research centers on Dakota and Ojibwe relations of the eighteenth century. He was the 2017-18 NASNTI post-doctoral fellow at the University of Minnesota-Morris. He currently is a community faculty member at Metropolitan State University and an adjunct at the University of St. Thomas where he teaches early American history.

Part of the Panic and Plague in 1720 and 2020 Lecture Series