Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert (Hopi)
Assistant Professor, American Indian Studies and History

Office: Native American House, MC138
Phone: (217) 265-0180
E-mail: tewa@uiuc.edu

Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert is enrolled with the Hopi Tribe from the Village of Upper Moencopi in northeastern Arizona. Centering his research and teaching on Native American history and the history of the West, Professor Sakiestewa Gilbert examines the history of American Indian education, the Indian boarding school experience, and federal Indian polices of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. In addition to publishing articles on Hopi history and producing a documentary film (Beyond the Mesas) on the Hopi boarding school experience, Professor Sakiestewa Gilbert is completing a manuscript entitled Education Beyond the Mesas: Hopi Student Involvement at Sherman Institute, 1902-1929, which is under advance contract with the University of Nebraska Press. Professor Sakiestewa Gilbert is also co-editor of an anthology entitled Turning the Power at Sherman Institute, which is under review with the State University of New York Press.

Along with his work on the history of American Indian and Hopi education, Professor Sakiestewa Gilbert is writing a second monograph, Hopi Running in the Fourth Way of Life, which examines the history of Hopi running within the context of Hopi and American sport culture. Apart from his scholarship on Hopi runners, Professor Sakiestewa Gilbert has recently contributed a chapter on the encounters and relationships of American Indian leaders with presidents of the United States for an upcoming publication with the National Museum of the American Indian and Harper Collins Press.

Prior to his current post in American Indian Studies & History, Professor Sakiestewa Gilbert served as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in American Indian Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and as an adjunct faculty in history at the University of Redlands, Azusa Pacific University, San Bernardino Valley Community College, and The Master’s College.

Professor Sakiestewa Gilbert received his Ph.D. in History, and M.A. in Public History (Historic Preservation), from the University of California, Riverside, and also holds a M.A. in Theology from Talbot School of Theology (Biola University).