Gateway Chapter Presentation on the Iowa Tribe and the Oregon-California Trail
Last Thursday, OCTA’s Gateway Chapter streamed a presentation on the impact of the historic trails on the Iowa Tribe. It is archived on the Chapter’s Facebook page and will remain available for viewing at your leisure. The Gateway Chapter and the St. Joseph Museums presented a virtual program featuring Lance Foster and Greg Olson presenting a virtual program about the history, present, and future of the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska. In the mid- 1800s the Iowa lived in Platte Indian Territory (now northwest Missouri) before being moved across the Missouri River to Kansas Territory. Oregon and California bound emigrants had to cross their land.
OCTA member Lance Foster is Vice Chair at Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska and is the Tribal Historic Preservation Office, consulting for the tribe on environmental and cultural compliance. He also founded the tribal museum, is an Ioway language advocate and NAGRA officer. Foster has a BA in Anthropology/Native American Studies from the University of Montana and an MA in Anthropology and a Masters in Landscape Architecture from Iowa State University. An acknowledged artist, he is also author of Indians of Iowa. He currently resides in White Cloud, Kansas.
Greg Olson was the curator of exhibits and special projects at the Missouri State Archives for nineteen years. He received an MA in History from the University of Missouri and an MFA – Art from the University of South Dakota. He is the author of two books published by the University of Missouri Press and numerous publications. One of these titles, The Ioway in Missouri, won the Missouri Humanities Council’s Governor’s Humanities Award for Distinguished Literary Achievement. Olson has also published three biographies in the Notable Missourians series for upper-level elementary school students with Truman State University Press. His most recent book, Ioway Life: Reservation and Reform, 1837–1860, was named a Kansas Notable Book in 2017. He is the 2020 Center for Missouri Studies Fellow. |