Meet Our Editorial Assistants

The editors would like to recognize the several students presently assisting them on the Indian Papers Project.  

Anya Montiel and Ryan Hall are two of the editorial assistants who are working with materials from the Massachusetts Archives and the National Archives of the U.K.  Gabe Benjamin is this year’s editorial intern from the Public History Program at Central Connecticut State University.  His focus has been on the Project’s documents relating to King Philip’s War.

 

Anya Montiel is a doctoral student in American Studies at Yale University. She received bachelor’s degrees in anthropology and Native American Studies from the University of California at Davis. She holds a master’s degree in museum studies from John F. Kennedy University in Berkeley, CA, where she wrote her thesis on Native American museums and cultural centers. She has worked in the museum field for more than ten years, including seven years at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI). While at the NMAI, Anya worked in the collections management, education, public programming, and curatorial departments, including the development of the 2004 inaugural exhibition, Native Modernism: The Art of George Morrison and Allan Houser, and Continuum: 12 Artists for the museum’s New York location. Anya has been a writer for the Smithsonian’s American Indian magazine since 2002 where she writes about contemporary Native American life, peoples, and art.

Ryan Hall is a Ph.D. candidate in the history program at Yale University, specializing in American Indian history and the history of the American West.  His dissertation project, entitled “Blackfoot Country: the Making and Unmaking of the Northern Plains Fur Trade, 1782-1870,” is a social and political history of the Blackfoot peoples of what is now Montana and Alberta during the era of the fur trade.  Ryan is especially interested in the Blackfeet’s relationship with non-Indian outsiders and corresponding changes within Blackfoot society.  Ned Blackhawk and John Mack Faragher are his co-advisors.  Ryan was the graduate coordinator for the Yale Group for the Study of Native America (YGSNA) in 2012.  He also published an article on John Steinbeck and historical memory in the Winter 2012 issue of Agricultural History, and has received fellowships from the Newberry Library, the Canadian Government and the Beinecke Library, among others.  Ryan earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Oklahoma in 2008.

My name is Gabe Benjamin and I am in my third year as a history major at Central Connecticut State University. I enjoy various historical eras concerning different regions of the world, though I do have an affinity for early American history. Unfortunately, I have found that the perspectives of many different groups from this time period have not always been included in this history. One such group that has been marginalized is the Native Americans. Therefore, I was excited when I discovered that I would have the opportunity to intern with the Yale Indian Papers Project. I also wanted to see what it is like to be a public historian outside of the traditional classroom. In addition to learning about history, I enjoy outdoor activities such as hiking and biking, as well as reading JRR Tolkien.

 

Credit: Photograph of “Typewriter by LC Smith & Brothers “ by Jesse Hernandez (2010), Creative Commons.

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