Building a Nation in the Aftermath of Revolution: The Northwest Ordinance and the Creation of New American States

Building a Nation in the Aftermath of Revolution: The Northwest Ordinance and the Creation of New American States
Lecture by Philip J. Deloria
Hosted by the Leelanau Historical Society

Leland Public School Performing Arts Center

In the wake of the American Revolution, the United States created structures for continental expansion, which required a formal American Indian policy, visible in early legislation such as the Land Ordinance of 1785, the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, and the Trade and Intercourse Act of 1790.  Translating the legal language of these documents into history and geography, this talk will lay bare the ambitions and the contradictions that characterized the young nation.

Philip J. Deloria is the Leverett Saltonstall Professor of History at Harvard University and one of the nation’s leading scholars of American Indian history and culture. His research explores the social, cultural, and political relationships between Indigenous peoples and the United States, as well as Indigenous histories in a global context. Deloria is the author of several acclaimed books, including Playing Indian, Indians in Unexpected Places, and Becoming Mary Sully: Toward an American Indian Abstract, which inspired the recent exhibition Mary Sully: Native Modern at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A former president of multiple national historical organizations, he has also served as a trustee of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian. Deloria’s lecture for the Leelanau Historical Society will bring nationally recognized scholarship and insight to the community.