Professor Nakia Parker discusses her article, “Regarded as an Appendage of His Family”: Slavery, Family, and the Law in Indian Territory.” Chattel slavery spread into the Chickasaw Nation, in part, due to the “Civilization Program.” How the Chickasaw legalized ownership and kinship is the focus of our discussion.
Nakia D. Parker is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Michigan State University. Dr. Parker is a scholar of chattel slavery in Native slaveholding communities. She is currently working on her first monograph, Trails of Tears and Freedom: Black Life in Indian Slave Country, 1830-1866.