Laurie Arnold
Arnold (Ph.D., Arizona State University, 2005) is an enrolled member of the Sinixt Band of the Colville Confederated Tribes and is Director of Native American Studies at Gonzaga University. She has previously held positions at the D'Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies at the Newberry Library in Chicago and at the University of Notre Dame. Her first book, Bartering with the Bones of Their Dead: The Colville Confederated Tribes and Termination, was published by the University of Washington Press in 2012. She holds a PhD in History from Arizona State University and a Bachelor’s degree in History from Oregon State University.
While at the UNLV Special Collections, Arnold will utilize the Katherine Spilde Papers on Tribal Gaming, for a new research project, A History of Indian Gaming: The First Forty Years. Within the Spilde papers she is particularly interested in testimonies, conference and meetings proceedings, and impact studies related to Indian gaming. Indian gaming both reinforces and limits tribal sovereignty. When considering tribal gaming, Native communities contemplate questions related to tribal identity and tribal cultural practices, and weigh potentially negative impacts on identity and culture against the possibility of economic success. She anticipates that items within the Spilde collection will illustrate some of these discussions and consequently enhance understanding of Native American community perspectives on tribal gaming.
Arnold's colloquium talk, "Indian Gaming, American Anxiety" is scheduled for March 18, 2015, at 3 PM in the Goldfield Room, Lied Library, UNLV campus.
