Robert E. Walls

Research Associate,

(803) 777-2308

Education

Ph.D., Indiana University, 1997

Specialization Areas

• Native American/First Nations
• Environmental history and ecocriticism
• Working-class culture, labor history
• Oral tradition, oral history
• Ritual and performance

Recent Courses

Eng. 429:  Native American Literature

Current Research Project(s)

My research, teaching, and consulting are devoted to cultivating a critical understanding of social and environmental justice issues, the politics of heritage, and the stories of Native and non-Native people in North America.  I have worked with working-class and indigenous communities on the West Coast for over thirty years, and I am currently finishing two books that reflect this ethnographic and historical research.

The first book is an ethnohistorical study of the colonial and postcolonial transformations of a single First Nations oral tradition, how Native and non-Native people have used this tradition to address anxieties about race and nature during a period of rapid social and environmental change, and the consequences of this appropriation of Native stories. The second project is an environmental history of working-class forest communities, and how the everyday experience, aspirations, and moral imaginations of logging families have shaped their engagement with politics, economics, and the natural world.

Selected Publications

Books:

• Bibliography of Washington State Folklore and Folklife. University of Washington Press, 1987.
• The Old Traditional Way of Life: Essays in Honor of Warren E. Roberts. (Coedited with George H. Schoemaker) Trickster Press, Indiana University, 1989.

Articles and Notes:

• “The Highclimber’s Performance: Private Labor, Public Spectacle, and Occupational Tradition in the Pacific Northwest Timber Industry.”  Western Folklore 65 (2006).
• “Lady Loggers and Gyppo Wives: Women and Northwest Logging.” Oregon Historical Quarterly 103 (2002).
• “Foreword.” Gyppo Logger, by Margaret Elley Felt. University of Washington Press, 2002.
• “Green Commonwealth: Forestry, Labor, and Public Ritual in the Post-WWII Pacific Northwest.” Pacific Northwest Quarterly 87 (1996).
• “Folklore as Social Action in the Pacific Northwest’s Logging Subculture.” Forest and Conservation History  35 (1991)
• “Folklife and Material Culture.” In The Emergence of Folklore in Everyday Life. Ed. By G.H. Schoemaker. Trickster Press, Indiana University, 1989.
• “Logger Poetry and the Expression of Worldview.”  Northwest Folklore 5 (1987).
• For the general public: Christian Science Monitor, Humboldt Historian, American Timberman and Trucker, Loggers World, Log Trucker, Finnish American Reporter, New World Finn, Cowlitz Historical Quarterly.

Selected Presentations

• "Native Stories and Native Studies: The Emergence and Erasure of an Indigenous Public Voice in the Pacific Northwest and the Southeast." Native American and Indigenous Studies Conference, Univ. of Georgia, 2008.
• “Racial Destinies, Spirits of Place, and the Power of Stories for Coast Salish in the Twentieth Century.” Pacific Northwest History Conference, Tacoma, 2007.
• “Considering the Ecological and Ecocritical Indian.” Modern Language Association, Washington, DC, 2005.

I have also presented at:  American Society for Environmental History, Western History Association, American Society for Literature and the Environment, American Anthropological Association, American Folklore Society, Working-Class Studies, International Symposium on Society and Resource Management, American Studies Association, Northwest Anthropological Conference, Vernacular Architecture Forum, and others.