Blaire Morseau
She/Her/Hers
Wells Hall
619 Red Cedar Rd
East Lansing, MI 48824
www.blairemorseau.com/
blaire-morseau-a10554278/
FacultyReligious StudiesAmerican Indian and Indigenous Studies
Assistant Professor
1855 Professor of Great Lakes Anishinaabe Knowledge, Spiritualities, and Cultural Practices
Biography
Blaire Morseau is a citizen of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians and Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Michigan State University where she is also Affiliate Faculty in Digital Humanities and American Indian and Indigenous Studies. Before becoming a professor, she worked as her tribe’s first full-time archivist, launching an online collections and dictionary website called Wiwkwébthëgen using Potawatomi cultural protocols of access and traditional knowledge labels. She recently released an edited volume featuring the collection of antique birch bark books written by 19th century Potawatomi author, Simon Pokagon, titled, As Sacred to Us: Simon Pokagon’s Birch Bark Stories in their Contexts, published by MSU Press. Dr. Morseau consults on various exhibitions and collaborative programming for archives, libraries, and museums around the country including the Field Museum of Natural History, The Newberry Library, and The Indiana University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Her research interests are in Indigenous science fiction and futurisms, traditional cultural and ecological knowledge, digital heritage, and Native counter-mapping. Her newest book project to be published in May 2025 with the University of Arizona Press, is titled Mapping Neshnabé Futurity: Celestial Currents of Sovereignty in Potawatomi Skies, Lands, and Waters. The monograph investigates how Native peoples in the Great Lakes region leverage their traditional knowledge in environmental activism and in creative works of speculative fiction to reclaim Indigenous space and tribal sovereignty.
Publications
Morseau, Blaire and Les Field. (under review). “Anarchist Futures: Indigenous Influences in the Speculative World-Making of Ursula K. Le Guin,” Wicazo Sa.
Morseau, Blaire (July 2025). “Gdankobthegnanêk: ‘Ancestors’ or ‘the ones we are tied to through generations.'” In Woven Being: Art for Zhegagoynak/Chicagoland. Bickford Berzock, Kathleen, Jordan Poorman Cocker and Janet Dees (eds.). Marquand Books, University of Washington Press. ISBN 9781732568440
Morseau, Blaire (2024). “Indigenizing Futures in Museum Contexts.” In The Future is Indigenous: Stories from the new Native North America Hall at the Field Museum, Wali, Alaka and Tom Skwerski (eds.). BAR. pp. 220-224. ISBN 9781407361192
Morseau, Blaire (2024). “Chicago as a Gathering Space.” In The Future is Indigenous: Stories from the new Native North America Hall at the Field Museum, Wali, Alaka and Tom Skwerski (eds.). BAR. pp. 2-3. ISBN 9781407361192
Morseau, Blaire, Ed. (2023). As Sacred to Us Simon Pokagon’s Birch Bark Stories in their Contexts. Michigan State University Press. pp. 153-191. Paperback ISBN 9781611864625
Morseau, Blaire (2023). “Coding Potawatomi Cosmologies: Elements of Bodwéwadmi Futurisms.” In The Routledge Companion to CoFuturisms, Chattopadhyay, Bodhisattva, Grace Dillon, Isiah Lavender III, and Taryne Jade Taylor (eds.). ISBN 9780367330613
Topash-Caldwell, Blaire (2020). “Sovereign Futures in Neshnabé Speculative Fiction,” Borderlands Journal, 19(2): 29-62.
Topash-Caldwell, Blaire (2020). “‘Beam Us Up, Bgwëthnėnė!’ A Discussion of Indigenizing Science (Fiction), Technology, Engineering, and Math,” AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples, 16(2): 81-89.
Projects
The Indigenous Chicago Project
Co-Director – Indigenous Chicago is a multifaceted project that explores these histories by centering Indigenous voices, laying bare stories of settler-colonial harm, and gesturing toward Indigenous futures. Indigenous Chicago is a living project and archive that will continue to be added to in collaboration with Native communities.
Courses
REL 306 Native American Religions
University News
