Jennifer O'Neal

Jennifer O'Neal
2023-24 Resident Scholar
Department of Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies

Jennifer R. O'Neal is an assistant professor in the Department of Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies at the University of Oregon, and affiliated faculty with the History Department and Robert D. Clark Honors College. Her interdisciplinary research and teaching focus on Native American, United States, and international relations history in the twentieth century to the present, with an emphasis on sovereignty, self-determination, cultural heritage, global Indigenous rights, activism, and legal issues. Her scholarship has appeared in various research journals and book chapters. 

Wayne Morse Resident Scholar Project: "Fighting for Native American Sovereignty through Global Indigenous Movements”
This project examines the role of Native Americans in global movements of Indigenous peoples and their impact on campaigns for greater sovereignty, rights, and democracy within the United States. Building on O'Neal's previous research on Native American international activism between 1975 and 1980, this project moves that work into the present by considering how activists have used the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007) to address urgent contemporary questions faced by native communities about protecting data, history, intellectual property, and traditional knowledge. Through oral histories and consultations with Indigenous representatives, this project will document how Native American policy makers, activists, and community members have collaborated with other Indigenous groups globally to protect Indigenous rights and lifeways within and beyond the nation-state system.