This year's Alden-Berg Lecture will feature Benjamin Madley, UCLA associate professor of history and American Indian studies. Author of "An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe," his first book, Madley is an historian of Native America, the United States and colonialism in world history.
Born in Redding, California, Madley spent much of his childhood in Karuk Country near the Oregon border where he became interested in the relationship between colonizers and indigenous peoples. He writes about American Indians as well as colonial genocides in Africa, Australia, and Europe, often applying a transnational and comparative approach.
Between 1846 and 1873, California’s Indian population plunged from perhaps 150,000 to 30,000. Madley is the first historian to uncover the full extent of the slaughter, the involvement of state and federal officials, the taxpayer dollars that supported the violence, indigenous resistance, who did the killing, and why the killings ended.
The lecture, presented by the UCLA Department of History, will take place from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. in the CNSI Auditorium. To RSVP, go here.