University of Montana Scholar Wins Two Book Awards From the Western History Association

Rosalyn LaPier, an associate professor of environmental studies at the University of Montana, has won two national book awards from the Western History Association. The John C. Ewers Book Award recognizes “the best published book” on the ethnohistory of North American Indians of Canada, Mexico or the U.S. The Donald Fixico Book Award recognizes “innovative work in the field of American Indian and Canadian First Nations History that centers Indigenous epistemologies and perspectives.”

Dr. LaPier was honored for her book Invisible Reality: Storytellers, Storytakers and the Supernatural World of the Blackfeet (University of Nebraska Press, 2017). This is the first time that a Native American woman has won a book award from the Western History Association as a stand-alone author. In 2016, Dr. LaPier became the first Native American woman to earn any book award from the Western History Association. She won the Robert G. Athearn Book Award for City Indian: Native American Activism in Chicago, 1893-1934 (University of Nebraska Press, 2015). She co-authored that book.

An enrolled member of the Blackfeet tribe, Dr. LaPier is a graduate of Colorado College, where she majored in physics. She holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of Montana.