Staff profile

Gabriella Treglia specialises in twentieth-century Native American socio-cultural history. She is preparing a book on the so-called ‘Indian New Deal’ (1933-1945), in particular the education programmes and professed cultural tolerance implemented by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), the gap between its pronouncements and policy implementation, and the reactions and responses from Native communities to these policies. Her further interests are in issues of cultural genocide, cultural perceptions of ‘the Other’, and Native decolonization, drawing upon archival, pictorial and oral history sources. She is a committee member of the Native Studies Research Network of the UK (NSRN-UK).

• My research focuses on Native American histories, in particular the interaction between Indigenous nations and US federal policy in the twentieth century. I am interested in deconstructing government policy to unpick motivations, implementation, and its relationship to settler colonialism, and in exploring the ways in which Indigenous nations and communities have refashioned, reinterpreted and resisted policy in order to defend and maintain political and cultural sovereignty.
• My monograph Education for Preservation? Examining Native American Education Policy in the New Deal, 1933-1945 (University Press of Kansas, 2025) is the first book-length analysis of New Deal education reforms. The book reexamines the controversial ‘Indian New Deal’ by focusing on what was taught at the government day and boarding schools, and on the staff, pupil, and community experiences of the schools. My work challenges interpretations of the New Deal as either an extension of earlier assimilationist control or a primarily preservationist policy. Instead, I argue that 1930s federal education policy posed a new threat to Indigenous cultural sovereignty, and that the New Deal cannot be understood through an either/or assimilation versus preservation model.
• Education for Preservation? demonstrates the dangers of top-down education approaches that can, whether intentionally or inadvertently, perpetuate colonial education paradigms and settler colonialist narratives, and generate cultural conflict. By tracing links with wider New Deal policy and earlier social reform initiatives, I raise questions about government and academic attitudes to cultural diversity, community knowledge, and the right to self-determination, and convey the resilience of Native nations and individuals in defending their cultural sovereignty against multi-faceted infringements and attacks.
• New Project:
• My current research examines federal policy initiatives towards rural communities in the 1930s and 1940s, exploring the role played by academics and scientists (anthropologists, rural sociologists, soil conservationists) in shaping government attitudes and programmes. While focusing primarily on the experiences of Indigenous nations, my research also examines the intersections, similarities and differences between federal Native American policy and wider New Deal environmental policy and attitudes towards rural America. My research brings together aspects of the ‘Indian New Deal’ with wider New Deal programmes and policies (eg the CCC, the Soil Conservation Service, the Subsistence Homesteads and new settlements projects) and draws upon histories of race, class, and the environment.
• PhD supervision:
• I am happy to supervise postgraduate students working on Native American histories (19th-21st centuries); federal policy and settler colonialism; US environmental histories; the New Deal; citizenship, race and assimilation in the US (1890 -1980).

Authored book

• Education for Preservation? Examining Native American Education Policy in the New Deal, 1933-1945
  
  Treglia, G. (2025). Education for Preservation? Examining Native American Education Policy in the New Deal, 1933-1945. University Press of Kansas.

Chapter in book

• American Indian issues during reconstruction
  
  Treglia, G. (2008). American Indian issues during reconstruction. In J. Campbell & R. Fraser (Eds.), Reconstruction: People and Perspectives (pp. 89-112). ABC-CLIO.
• A very 'Indian' future? The place of native cultures and communities in BIA and native thought in the New Deal era
  
  Treglia, G. (2007). A very ’Indian’ future? The place of native cultures and communities in BIA and native thought in the New Deal era. In J. Porter (Ed.), Place and native American Indian history and culture. (pp. 357-381). Peter Lang.

Journal Article

• Cultural pluralism or cultural imposition? Examining the Bureau of Indian Affairs' education reforms during the Indian New Deal (1933-1945)
  
  Treglia, G. (2019). Cultural pluralism or cultural imposition? Examining the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ education reforms during the Indian New Deal (1933-1945). Journal of the Southwest, 61(4), 821-862. https://doi.org/10.1353/jsw.2019.0035
• Using Citizenship to Retain Identity: The Native American Dance Bans of the Later Assimilation Era, 1900–1933.
  
  Treglia, G. (2013). Using Citizenship to Retain Identity: The Native American Dance Bans of the Later Assimilation Era, 1900–1933. Journal of American Studies, 47(3), 777-800. https://doi.org/10.1017/s002187581200206x
• The Consistency and Inconsistency of Cultural Oppression: American Indian Dance Bans, 1900–1933.
  
  Treglia, G. (2013). The Consistency and Inconsistency of Cultural Oppression: American Indian Dance Bans, 1900–1933. Western Historical Quarterly, 44(2), 145-166. https://doi.org/10.2307/westhistquar.44.2.0145