Kathleen C. Whiteley

Kathleen Whiteley (Wiyot descent) is an assistant professor in the Department of Native American Studies.

Prof. Whiteley received her Ph.D. in American Culture from the University of Michigan. Her dissertation, “The Indians of California versus The United States of America: California Dreaming in the Land of Lost Treaties, 1900-1975,” traces the history of two land claims cases brought by the Native peoples of California against the federal government. This project argues that these legal actions and the Indigenous political organizing behind them not only offered Indigenous peoples in California a path towards remuneration, but also new ways of conceiving local identities and imagining inter-tribal political coalitions. She plans to publish a revised version the dissertation as a monograph, and then to develop a second project that examines the history of the eighteen “lost” unratified treaties made in California between 1851-52. Prof. Whiteley was born and raised in Eureka, California. She is a descendant of the Wiyot Tribe.