American Indian Studies

Brad's training is in the historical geography of agricultural settlement and U.S. federal Indian policy, especially as it operated in what became Oklahoma during the allotment era of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He has examined the political geography of tax-exempt status retailing in Indian country and the interactions of tribal governments and state governments. Since arriving at OSU, Brad has worked with geographic education initiatives and he has often contracted with the state to identify and record Oklahoma's architecturally and historically significant buildings.

Research Interests:
Brad's research uses a landscape and historical GIS approach to examine Oklahoma's agricultural evolution. A native of the waning eastern margin of the Winter Wheat Belt, he documents twentieth century agricultural change at the local scale from a time of peak rural population density, when animal-powered general farming was the rule, across a century of mechanization and regional specialization, and ultimately agro-industrialization and the retirement of marginal lands. He is interested in gauging the local scale and short term decisions that drive agricultural intensification and in turn affect patterns of regional specialization.

I am an associate professor of Native American and United States History at Oklahoma State University and I was previously a research fellow at Southern Methodist University's Clements Center for Southwest Studies. My first book, Indians on the Move: Native American Mobility and Urbanization in the Twentieth Century (UNC, 2019), discusses the dynamic and consequential experiences Native American people shared throughout the twentieth century when moving to major cities for work, education, and social opportunities.

My second book, Washita Love Child: The Rise of Indigenous Rock Star Jesse Ed Davis (Liveright/W.W. Norton & Company, 2024), tells the extraordinary story of Jesse Ed Davis, the Kiowa/Comanche musician from Oklahoma City who played with Bob Dylan, John Lennon, George Harrison, Taj Mahal, and over one hundred more major artists before an untimely death. Davis amplified Indigenous peoples' important place in both the history of North American music and the transatlantic crosscurrents of popular music in the late twentieth century.

My third book, also under contract with Liveright/Norton, will be a comprehensive history of Native American peoples and incarceration from the colonial period to the present.

Alongside US Poet Laureate Joy Harjo, I am co-curator of Natural Anthem: Jesse Ed Davis, which opened at the Bob Dylan Center (Tulsa, OK) in November 2024. This is the first ever museum exhibit dedicated to the important Indigenous musician from Oklahoma.

Additionally, I am co-producer of Jesse Ed Davis, Tomorrow May Not Be Your Day, an archival 2LP set of seventeen unissued Jesse Ed Davis songs released by Warner Music/Rhino/Real Gone Music in November 2024.

I have also published on the subjects of Indigenous Dallas, Indigenous Chicago, and Indigenous incarceration.

In my personal life, I enjoy time with my family and playing music.

Research Interests:

Native American history, United States history, Music history

Native American Literature
Indigenous Studies
American Literature
community engagement

film, music, and literary arts outreach