Author

Michael Lambert

Michael C. Lambert is Associate Professor of African Studies and Anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and an enrolled citizen of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. My research has focused on francophone West Africa and, in particular, the West African nation of Senegal. I lived for over five years in Senegal and the neighboring nation of Mauritania, where I served as a Peace Corps volunteer. My first book, Longing for Exile: Migration and the Making of a Translocal Community in Senegal (West Africa) (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2002), is a historical ethnography of a Senegalese community. In addition, I have published on gender, negritude, transnational migration, and West African politics.

Lake Monona and the Peck cabin, site of Madison’s inaugural Thanksgiving meal, in 1838 (note teepee at left). But Native Americans and Europeans first met in Wisconsin to give eat and thanks two centuries earlier, following a dramatic rescue. (Wisconsin Historical Society: Image 2859)

How land acknowledgments for indigenous people sanitize history

By: Elisa Sobo, Michael Lambert and Valerie Lambert - October 12, 2021

Many events these days begin with land acknowledgments: earnest statements acknowledging that activities are taking place, or institutions, businesses and even homes are built, on land previously owned by Indigenous peoples. And many organizations now call on employees to incorporate such statements not only at events but in email signatures, videos, syllabuses and so on. […]

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