OSU Libraries to host author event showcasing Indigenous history, perspectives

Tuesday, September 22, 2026

Media Contact: Jade Dudley | Library Communication Services Manager | 405-744-7331 | jade.dudley@okstate.edu

Edmon Low Library will host author and Brown University history professor Dr. Linford Fisher on Sept. 29 at 4 p.m. in the Peggy V. Helmerich Browsing Room to discuss his book, “Stealing America: The Hidden Story of Indigenous Slavery in U.S. History.”

“Stealing America” was shortlisted for the 2026 Cundill History Prize and contains original research and prose about the enslavement of Indigenous peoples after 1492. Fisher traces the history of Indigenous enslavement and land dispossession, detailing how colonizers captured Native people.

Fisher's research and teaching relate primarily to the cultural and religious history of colonial America and the Atlantic world, including Native Americans, religion, material culture and slavery. He is the author of “The Indian Great Awakening: Religion and the Shaping of Native Cultures in Early America,” co-author of “Decoding Roger Williams: The Lost Essay of Rhode Island’s Founding Father,” and co-author of “Reading Roger Williams: Rogue Puritans, Indigenous Nations, and the Founding of America — A Documentary History.”

He is also the founder and principal investigator of the Stolen Relations: Recovering Stories of Indigenous Enslavement in the Americas project, which is a tribal community-centered collaborative project that seeks to create a public, centralized database of Native slavery throughout the Americas and across time.

The event is sponsored by the OSU Department of History, Edmon Low Library and the American Indian Studies Program.