Kabl Wilkerson (they/them) is an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation (Bourassa & Muller families; Bear Clan) and is a doctoral candidate in the History Department at Harvard University. Their scholarly interests examine the evolving contradictions in U.S Indian policy from the early nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries as shifting forms of imperial, state-building practices. Their dissertation highlights the imposition of federal definitions for tribal membership in federal Indian policy as an example of these practices and notes the way in which foreign observers took stock of these developments, primarily in Germany, as a source of validation of the continuities in U.S. imperial practice. They received their B.A. from Texas Tech University in 2019 (summa cum laude & highest honors) and their A.M. in History from Harvard University in 2023.

Kabl has also written and presented about Northeastern (Great Lakes) Indian Removal policy, practice, and resistance for the D’Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies at the Newberry Library in Chicago and the Citizen Potawatomi Nation Cultural Heritage Center in Shawnee, Oklahoma, and maintains a collaborative, scholarly relationship with both institutions. In their free time, Kabl works on Bodéwadmik (Potawatomi) and Great Lakes Indian histories with other Neshnabé, non-Neshanbé, and non-native scholars, ranging from the early seventeenth to the mid-twentieth centuries.

If you have questions about the program, please feel free to reach out to me using the contact information provided. I welcome inquiries and the opportunity to connect with you.