Jan. 21 lecture to examine history of mass deportation

On Jan. 21, via Zoom, Claudio Saunt will give a lecture on “Indian Removal and Mass Deportation in the Modern Era.” Saunt will explore the history of Indian removal in the context of other mass deportations in the 19th and 20thcenturies.

He’ll look specifically at the U.S.-sponsored expulsion of the Indian population in the 1830s, known as the “Trail of Tears,” in which some 46,000 members of multiple Indian nations were forcibly moved from their ancestral homelands and driven westward.

This removal of entire populations created something of a model for future actions by colonial empires around the world, including the infamous deportations of World War II. Notoriously, during the Nazi conquest of Eastern Europe, Hitler equated “indigenous inhabitants,” with “Indians,” and declared, “the Volga must be our Mississippi.”

Saunt is the Richard B. Russell Professor in American History at the University of Georgia, Athens. Saunt’s recent book, The Unworthy Republic: the Dispossession of Native Americans, has been chosen by The New York Times as one of the top nonfiction books of 2020, and has been nominated for the National Book Award this year.

The lecture will be presented on Thursday, Jan. 21, at 7 p.m. It is sponsored by the Siegal Lifelong Learning Program of Case Western Reserve University, and co-sponsored by Beth El – The Heights Synagogue. The cost is $5 for members of Siegal Lifelong Learning, and $10 for non-members. Register at https://tinyurl.com/y85m2afq.