Sami Lakomäki

I am a cultural anthropologist specializing on the histories of Indigenous peoples and colonialism. My research has focused largely on Native Americans, especially the Shawnees. Recently I have also started to explore the histories of the Sámi people and colonialism in Fennoscandia. My special field is that creative mixture of anthropology and history known, in North America, as ethnohistory.

In addition to the University of Oulu, I have worked at the Southern Methodist University (Dallas, TX).

I am interested in power and politics in Indigenous societies, the complex relationships between Indigenous peoples and colonial states, colonialism, space as a political and cultural construct, borderlands, and Indigenous and colonial interpretations of "the past." I explore many of these themes in my first monograph Gathering Together: The Shawnee People through Diaspora and Nationhood, 1600-1870 (Yale University Press, 2014), as well as in articles published, for example, in Ethnohistory, NAIS: Journal of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association, and Journal of the Early Republic.