Hosted by the Slave Legacy History Coalition
With Dr. Linford Fisher
Wednesday, March 11, 2026
10:30-11:30 AM ET Online
| Indigenous enslavement was a colossal phenomenon of almost unimaginable consequences that ensnared nearly 600,000 Native Americans in North America. In a saga that predates 1619, this double–stealing of Indigenous people and their lands upends virtually every known narrative of American history. Captured Natives, often deliberately misidentified as Black slaves, were used not only on southern plantations, but on small northern farms, and were routinely shipped overseas. While the American Revolution pealed the bells of freedom for colonists, it paved a larcenous trail of westward expansion that decimated tribes and plundered Indigenous lands. Even after Congress outlawed Native slavery in 1867, Americans forced Indigenous children into boarding schools and white homes, where they labored under forced assimilation. This practice was not outlawed until the latter twentieth century, when Indian nations finally secured increasing rights and self–determination. The most comprehensive work of its kind, Stealing America presents a five–century genocidal history, more commonly known as the “American dream.” |
About Linford Fisher
Linford D. Fisher is an Associate Professor of History at Brown University. He is the author of The Indian Great Awakening: Religion and the Shaping of Native Cultures in Early America (2012), the co-author of Decoding Roger Williams: The Lost Essay of Rhode Island’s Founding Father (2014), and the co-editor of Reading Roger Williams: Rogue Puritans, Indigenous Nations, and the Founding of America – A Documentary History (2024), as well as more than a dozen articles and chapters. Fisher is the Principal Investigator of a digital project titled Stolen Relations: Recovering Stories of Indigenous Enslavement in the Americas, which is a community-centered, tribal-collaborative project that seeks to broaden our understanding of Indigenous experiences of settler colonialism and its legacies through the lens of slavery and servitude. He has just finished a book called Stealing America: The Hidden Story of Indigenous Slavery in U.S. History (which will be out with Liveright/Norton in April 2026).
Stealing American: The Hidden Story of Indigenous Slavery in U.S. History is available for preorder here.
This presentation represents the view of the speaker and not necessarily that of the Slave Legacy History Coalition.
