Benjamin Madley, historian and author of a book on the genocide of California’s Native Americans, will be the guest speaker at an event hosted by the Cal State San Bernardino History Club and Phi Alpha Theta on Wednesday, Jan. 25.
Madley’s talk, “An American Genocide: The United States and California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873,” is set for noon in the John M. Pfau Library, room PL-4005. The event is free and open to the public; parking at CSUSB is $6.
“An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873 (Yale University Press, 2016)” is Madley’s first book and recently received the 2016 Heyday Books History Award.
Between 1846 and 1873, California's Indian population plunged from perhaps 150,000 to 30,000, according to a synopsis of the book. Madley is the first historian to uncover the full extent of the slaughter. He reveals the involvement of state and federal officials, the taxpayer dollars that supported the violence, indigenous resistance, who did the killing, and why the killings ended.
In addition to his research specialty in Native American history, Madley, an assistant professor of history at UCLA, also is a historian of the United States and colonialism in world history. Born in Redding, Calif., he spent much of his childhood in Karuk Country near the Oregon border, where he became interested in the relationship between colonizers and indigenous peoples.
He writes about American Indians as well as colonialism in Africa, Australia, and Europe, often applying a transnational and comparative approach.
Madley earned his undergraduate degree in history, as well as two master’s degrees and his Ph.D. from Yale University. He also holds a graduate degree from Oxford University.
The CSUSB History Club has been recognized twice in the past three years as the best Phi Alpha Theta History Honors Society chapter in the country.
The club is an active organization of students engaged with campus and the surrounding community in many ways. For its tutoring and regional volunteer work, as well as the academic excellence and intellectual engagement of its members, the club also has been recognized as the campus’s most outstanding student organization three years running by the Office of Student Engagement,
The Coyote Bookstore will sell copies of Madley’s book at the lecture at a discounted price of $29.
Funding for Madley’s presentation is provided by the CSUSB Intellectual Life Fund.
For more information, contact the history club vice president, Alex Hampton at hampa303@coyote.csusb.edu.
For more information on Cal State San Bernardino, contact the university’s Office of Strategic Communication at (909) 537-5007 and visit news.csusb.edu.