Kent Blansett

Kent Blansett is a Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Shawnee, and Potawatomi descendant from the Blanket, Panther, and Smith families. He serves as an Assistant Professor of History and Native American Studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Blansett is the founder of the American Indian Digital History Project which provides a free, open source, searchable, and cooperative archive for rare Indigenous underground newspapers, print media, photos, and other ephemera at www.aidhp.com. He has published numerous book chapters including: "When the Stars Fell from the Sky: The Cherokee Nation and Autonomy during the Civil War" in Virginia Scharff's Empire and Liberty: The Civil War and the West; "San Francisco, Red Power, and the Emergence of an Indian City" in Kathleen Brosnan and Amy Scott's City Dreams, Country Schemes: Community and Identity in the American West. He has also authored a number of articles on BlogWest and his writing has also appeared in Indian Country Today. His first book, eighteen years in the making, is the first biography of the Akwesasne Mohawk student leader Richard Oakes, credited as a leader involved in the 1969 takeover of Alcatraz Island by the organization Indians of All Tribes. Oakes played a pivotal role in Red Power activism from the 1960s to 1970s, sparking liberation movements at Fort Lawton, Pit River, Clear Lake, and Rattlesnake Island. His assassination in 1972 prompted the Trail of Broken Treaties march on Washington and his leadership helped usher in a new era in federal Indian policy known as self-determination.