In this video, I reflect on a conversation I had with the late Hopi scholar Emory Sekaquaptewa and on his article “One More Smile for a Hopi Clown.” The conversation took place nearly twenty years ago, while I was interviewing for a faculty position in the Department of American Indian Studies at the University of Arizona. At the time, I was a young scholar and thought Emory would always be there to mentor and guide me through the academy. He passed away less than a year later. I made this video in his memory.
Author: Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert
I am Professor of History and Professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Arizona. I am enrolled with the Hopi Tribe from the village of Upper Munqapi in northeastern Arizona.
When Dogs Could Talk
Below is a short video I made recalling words from Kiowa poet N. Scott Momaday: “Long ago, when dogs could talk.” I first came across this quote, and the story behind it, in Ken Burns’ film The West, Episode 1. I often bring this quote up in class, using it to teach my students the importance and value of Native ways of knowing and belonging. I recorded the video of the fire pit during an elk hunt on October 8, 2026, in Arizona hunting unit 5B North.
Hunting As a Hopi Youth
Earlier this month, I set out once again with my dad to hunt elk. He is now in his mid-70s, and I often wonder how many more years we will be able to share these experiences together. Someday, my memories will be all that remain of these hunts with him, which is why I have made an effort to record our conversations, including this one.
In this video, I ask my dad about his early memories of hunting as a Hopi youth. He recalls hunting rabbits, squirrels, and deer near the San Francisco Peaks and the Arizona towns of Leupp and Kayenta. He also shares stories of hunting with his father.
The interview, which is very casual in nature, takes place on October 10, 2026, during our elk hunt in a remote location in Arizona—hunting unit 5B North, southwest of Winslow. The hunt was part of the Hopi Hunt organized by the Hopi Tribe’s Wildlife & Ecosystems Management Program.
A True Friend of the Indian
[On April 28, 2026, historian John Troutman of the National Museum of American History delivered a talk at the University of Arizona titled “B.B. King Called it ‘That Sound!’: Finding the Indigenous Roots of Popular Music.” The Department of American Indian Studies hosted the event. I was honored to introduce him at the gathering. My comments are below.]
Good evening, everyone,
My name is Matt Sakiestewa Gilbert, and I have the honor of introducing our speaker, Dr. John Troutman.
Dr. Troutman currently serves as the Curator of Music and Musical Instruments and Chair of the Division of Culture & the Arts at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, a post he has held since 2016.
Before this, Dr. Troutman was a professor of History and Geography at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
In addition to his administrative and academic posts, he is perhaps best known for his scholarship, having published two outstanding books entitled Indian Blues: American Indians and the Politics of Music, 1879-1934, and Kika Kila: How the Hawaiian Steel Guitar Changed the Sound of Modern Music, both of which have won multiple awards.
On a personal note, I first met Dr. Troutman several years ago, as he and I presented at the same conferences, including those early meetings of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association conference in Norman, Oklahoma, and Athens, Georgia. When we met, we talked about the state of the field, Native history, and the Indian boarding school experience. But mostly we talked about music.
I still remember in the summer of 2008, when Dr. Troutman reached out to me about my dissertation. He had read it and wanted to cite it in his book, Indian Blues. That made me feel pretty good, and it started a conversation between him and me about Hopi musicians, including one named Clarence Taptooka from my village of Munqapi. A year later, Dr. Troutman’s book came out. How honored I was to read his discussion of my work in his monograph.
You can learn a lot about a person when you read the Preface and Acknowledgments to their books: what they value, cherish, what motivates them, etc. Here’s a brief excerpt from Dr. Troutman’s Preface to Indian Blues:
I would like to recognize the extraordinary talents, tenacity, and courage of Native people featured in this book who challenged the federal government’s policies of assimilation and allotment in such profoundly important and creative ways. As a small tribute to them, and in memory of Hartman Lomawaima, the proceeds from this book will benefit the Hopi Education Endowment Fund.
Dr. Troutman does more than write about Indian people; he helps make opportunities for them, including Hopi students pursuing a college education beyond the mesas.
Finally, I think it is important to mention that Dr. Troutman is not just a terrific scholar, former professor, and a highly esteemed administrator. He is also one of our own. In the mid 1990s, Dr. Troutman navigated this campus as an M.A. student in American Indian Studies. It was here that he studied with AIS faculty Nancy Parezo, K. Tsianina Lomawaima, David Wilkins, and Tom Holm, among others, ultimately completing a thesis entitled “The Overlord of the Savage World: Anthropology, the Media, and the American Indian Experience at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair.”
It’s great to have you back, John.
Without further ado, please join me in welcoming a true friend of the Indian, Dr. John Troutman.
BTM 230 Santa Fe All Indian Band
Beyond the Mesas, LLC recently launched a new course!
This mini course explores the history of the Santa Fe All Indian Band, a group of Native musicians from the Navajo, Hopi, Laguna Pueblo, and other tribal communities who performed across the Southwest and even marched in President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 1953 Inaugural Parade.
Through four connected lessons, this course examines how Indian railroad workers formed the band, how the Santa Fe Railroad used Native imagery to promote the company, the boarding school experience that trained the musicians, and the family legacies that emerged from the ensemble.
This course is especially meaningful to me as my great-grandfather, Victor Sakiestewa from Upper Munqapi (originally from Oraibi), played the clarinet in the band.
The course costs $20.00.
People can work at their own pace, as BTM 230 is meant to be relaxing and informative. Click on the link below for more details and directions on how to enroll.
I hope to have you in my class!
A New Online Course on Hopi Runners
For the past several weeks, I have been developing an online course titled BTM 320 Hopi Runners. This is the first of several courses that I will launch as part of Beyond the Mesas, LLC.
The course covers a wide range of topics on Hopi long-distance running. The result of years of research on the topic, BTM 320 examines Hopi cultural understandings of running, Hopi participation in American marathons, off-reservation Indian boarding schools, Indians and modernity, and contemporary Hopi harriers.
The price for the 8-lesson course is $40.00.
To learn more about the course, please click on the website below. I hope to have you in my class!
Hunting Elk on Hopi Lands – Video [2026]
In this video I tell a story about hunting elk with my father, Willard Sakiestewa Gilbert, from Upper Munqapi. The account takes place on October 14, 2025, in Unit 5B North (Hopi-owned Hart Ranch), southwest of Winslow, Arizona. Each year, the Hopi Wildlife & Ecosystems Management Program works with Arizona Game and Fish to secure a set number of hunting permits for its tribal members. This hunt is known as the Hopi Hunt. I have written more about the Hopi Hunt in a previous post. The video incorporates images enhanced or created by Artificial Intelligence, namely SuperGrok, and music generated by ElevenLabs. I used this project to become more familiar with AI and its many capabilities, all while keeping my voice original and unaltered.
Native Historians and the Future of American Indian History
Below is a talk I gave at the Organization of American Historians conference (San Francisco, CA) on April 12, 2013. My talk was part of a panel discussion organized by Creek historian Donald Fixico on Native historians and the field of Native American history. At the time, I was an assistant professor of American Indian studies and history at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It was an honor for me, especially so early in my career, to be invited to deliver a paper for this panel by such an esteemed Native historian.
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Native Historians and the Future of American Indian History
by Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert
It’s an honor to be here today.
I want to thank my fellow panelists, Rose Stremlau and Paul Rosier, our Chair Sherry Smith, and a special thanks to Don Fixico, who invited us to participate in this morning’s panel.
As many of you would agree, it’s an exciting time to work on American Indian history.
I think back to much of the 20th century when Native history was predominantly written by white, male scholars.
Some here might say that not much has changed.
Perhaps this is true, and it likely is, but there are shifts in our field that encourage me as an indigenous person, and that are worth discussing in today’s forum.
This morning, I want to focus my comments, albeit very brief comments, on the work and role of Native historians.
I’m encouraged by the number of Native historians who recently completed their Ph. D.s, secured faculty appointments, and are actively publishing their work. I’m thinking here of Oneida historian Doug Kiel, Cherokee and Choctaw historian Kent Blansett, and Apache and Dakota historian Kiara Vigil.
These, and many other Native historians, are on my “radar.” And they should be on all of our “radars” as we think about the future of American Indian history.
Some of these historians, such as Doug Kiel, have chosen to write about their own people, and some have attempted to explain their people’s histories by using indigenous frameworks and Native ways of understanding.
This, of course, reminds me of Seminole historian Susan Miller, who in her edited book Native Historians Write Back, keenly observed that Indigenous thinkers often prefer to “work within” their “own people’s specific worldview.”
Native historians understand this. We get it, but our use of indigenous frameworks (or epistemologies) in our work do not always clearly or convincingly translate with non-Native historians.
I experienced this most recently when I submitted an essay on Hopi runner Louis Tewanima to the Western Historical Quarterly.
I was surprised that one of the reviewers had noted that my essay lacked a theoretical frame or argument.
In my essay, I argued (in part) that when Tewanima competed and excelled in American and Olympic marathons, he followed in the tradition of ancient Hopi clan runners who once ran far beyond Hopi ancestral lands to bring blessings to the Hopi people.
I situated Hopi culture at the center of the narrative, and I used a Hopi frame to explain his participation and success in national and international running events.
I did not want to write just another article on running – or even Native running. Nor did I want to provide readers with another romantic portrayal of Tewanima.
Either my reviewer did not see the Hopi frame that I was employing, or he or she refused to accept it.
As Native historians, we need to continue asserting and introducing indigenous frameworks of understanding in so-called mainstream academic history journals.
We know that this approach to Native history will be welcomed in American Indian Studies journals, but we have a broader (history) audience to reach with our work.
And this audience needs to be reminded that there are ways of thinking of Native history that go beyond the theories and models so commonly used and accepted by Western historians.
Finally, some of us need to do a better job consulting the scholarship of Native historians and other thinkers when we research and publish on their indigenous communities.
When we write about the Choctaw or Kiowa, we ought to honor their people by citing and listening to their scholars and other writers. Of course, I’m thinking here of Choctaw historian Jacki Thompson Rand, Choctaw writer LeAnne Howe, and Kiowa historian Jenny Tone-Pah-Hote.
And when we write about the Dine’, we ought to ask ourselves how the work of Dine’ historians Jennifer Nez Denetdale, Lloyd Lee, and many others might enlighten our understanding of their people.
Some here might say that I am simply stating the obvious.
I wish this were the case, but having peer-reviewed numerous essays for journals and other academic publications in my relatively short academic year, I know that this remains a problem in our field.
Indigenous communities did not send us to academic institutions to receive Ph. D.s in history to simply increase the number of Native faculty at universities and colleges.
They did not send us to academic institutions to simply add a bit of color to a once predominantly white narrative.
We have a message to tell about our history and cultures. And we have a responsibility to tell these histories in ways that are meaningful and useful to our people.
When we write about our people, our voices matter. They have always mattered.
I know that I spent my time talking about Native historians, but there are also young non-Native scholars such as Kate Williams and Kevin Whalen who are making noteworthy contributions. We should be appreciative when our Non-Native colleagues do it right and honor Indian people with their work.
In conclusion, I want to emphasize again that this is an exciting time to research and write on the history of American Indian people. We have a bright future ahead of us, and I look forward to seeing how the field will evolve and improve as Indian people take greater ownership of their past and write histories that originate from their communities and perspectives.
Kwa-kwa
Seeking the Native Voice in the Women’s National Indian Association
In October 2013, I had the honor of serving as the respondent for a conference panel on the Women’s National Indian Association (WNIA). The organization was founded in the late 1870s to advocate for Native women through Christianity and assimilation into white American society. Before the conference, I read papers by Valerie Sherer Mathes and Helen M. Bannan. Below are my remarks on the essays, which I delivered at the Western History Association annual conference (Tucson, Arizona). Two years later, the authors published their papers in Mathes’ edited book, The Women’s National Indian Association: A History, by the University of New Mexico Press (2015).
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Seeking the Native Voice in the Women’s National Indian Association
by Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert
It is an honor to be here this morning.
I want to give a special thanks to our panelists, Valerie Mathes, Helen Bannan, and, of course, my friend and colleague, Margaret Connell Szasz, who helped organize this gathering.
There is so much that can and should be said about the papers, and yet I have purposefully kept my comments brief.
I have been asked to focus on the “Native voice” and its role and importance in historical narratives.
Historians who work hard to include the Native voice in their works realize that Native people have something important to say about their own histories.
They realize that Natives of the past once demonstrated great agency, and that their individual and collective experiences matter when they retell their stories.
We know that some historians are often content to simply peruse the literature for glimpses of the Native voice.
And when their search comes up empty, they say to themselves: “Well, if I can’t find it in a book or article, then the Native voice must not exist.”
This, as you know, is far from the truth.
As we have heard this morning, it’s been difficult for historians to uncover the Native voice in the larger history of the WNIA.
But does this mean that the Native voice (at last within this context) does not or has never existed?
Consider for a moment the several historical newspapers of this period that reported on the WNIA, and how many of them (at the very least) hinted at the Native voice in their articles.
For example, at the Association’s fifth anniversary gathering in Washington, DC, in March 1887, a Washington Post reporter noted that “The history [of the WNIA] is supplemented by passages from the letters of the Indians who have been thus benefited [by the WNIA] and is to be published by the society.” (The Washington Post, March 5, 1887, p. 2).
Did the Association publish these letters (presumably in The Indian Helper) as the Washington Post reporter suggested? If so, and if the letters are available to researchers, what might historians gain from these accounts?
Other newspaper accounts report on so-called civilized Natives who addressed the WNIA at several of the Association’s annual “Branch” gatherings.
For example, at the Washington Branch of the WNIA’s annual meeting in May 1892, a reporter for the Washington Post noted that the Omaha physician Dr. Susan La Flesche, a “graduate of the Philadelphia Medical College for Women,” was scheduled to “address the meeting.” (The Washington Post, May 20, 1892, p. 4).
What did this prominent and very well-educated Omaha woman say in her address? Perhaps we will never know. But the historian in me wants to believe that there is an account of it somewhere.
One of the more powerful accounts of the Native voice and the WNIA took place in June 1884.
At this time, the WNIA had called together a meeting at the First Baptist Church in Philadelphia for its members to listen to Nez Perce Chief James Reuben talk about the wrongs of the U.S. government against his people.
A newspaper reporter for the Philadelphia Times noted that at the meeting, Reuben “gracefully took his stand behind the pulpit and, gazing cooly upon his audience, deliberately arranged a number of papers with which he had come prepared to fortify his cause.”
Here is how Reuben began his address:
“If only I could know your hearts and know how to address you and what things you are interested in, I could shape my address so as to please you all. I will speak, however, only upon the relations of my people and the Government.”
Reuben then went on to give his audience a brief history of his tribe and told of the many treaties that the U.S. government broke with the Nez Perce. He asked the WNIA’s help in convincing the government to allow a group of 250 Nez Perce, who at the time had been forcefully removed to Oklahoma, to return to their homelands in present-day Idaho.
“My heart is true to you as a Red Man,” he said to members of the WNIA who had gathered, “and you will find that the red man is just as honest as the white man. If you succeed in this object, I congratulate you in the name of God, and I believe you will succeed. The Indian is a man and ought to have all the rights of a man.” (San Francisco Chronicle, June 16, 1884, p. 2).
In the late 1800s, Rueben’s voice mattered to the WNIA. And his voice ought to matter to us today.
Furthermore, I am curious to know whether the WNIA motivated Native women in the 20th century to create their own organizations and clubs. We know that by the mid-1920s, hundreds of Native women from twenty-eight tribes came together to form The Eagle’s Feather Club in Spokane, Washington. Did these Native women create this organization in response to years of white women telling them how best to act and think?
I find the two organizations similar, but also very different.
Listen for a moment to Mary Lloyd of the Spokane Tribe in Washington (also adopted into the Colville Tribe), who also served as one of the Eagle Feather Club’s early presidents: “We pledge ourselves loyally to aide one another and all Indians to further ideals as first Americans, for developments and improvement. We pledge one another to drop all of our differences, and unite in a common friendship, cemented by this association, to work for our common good, and the betterment of all.” (Boston Daily Globe, August 5, 1926, p. A21).
And finally, I want to very briefly encourage or suggest that our two presenters spend more time examining Native (tribal specific) understandings of maternalism, and how this clashed with and complemented the political aspects of white American maternalism of the late nineteenth century.
There are ideological, cultural, and religious differences that are worth interrogating, and doing so (in addition to the inclusion of the Native voice) will only strengthen two already outstanding papers.
Kwa-kwa
A short piece on Hopi running for Highlights magazine
Seven years ago, editors from Highlights, a magazine for children, asked if I would be willing to write a short piece on Hopi running. I was thrilled to do so. The piece, titled “A Hopi Tradition Continues,” was part of a larger story on Hopi runner Louis Tewanima called “Miles from Home” by Kim Valice.
When I was young, my parents (and school) subscribed to Highlights, and I, along with my siblings, spent hours reading its stories, fascinated by the many colorful drawings and other images gracing its pages. Taking place before children could “surf” the internet, we waited for the arrival of each new edition with great anticipation. The magazine became our gateway to the world.
As I reflect on my childhood, this contribution will always remain special to me. It is not a “heavy-hitting” scholarly piece, published in one of the academy’s esteemed journals. It is not something that would significantly enhance a faculty’s tenure and promotion case. However, it is more meaningful than that. It was written for children, most of whom had never heard about the Hopi people, where we come from, or our long tradition of distance running.
