Celebrate Excellence: Dr. Jean O’Brien
Tuesday, June 7, 2022 at 8:21AMArticle by Becky Fillinger
Dr. Jean O’Brien
Our neighbor, Dr. Jean O’Brien, lived on Nicollet Island for 28 years; the last two years in Northeast a block away from the river. She is a celebrated professor of history at the University of Minnesota, with Distinguished McKnight University Professorship status. Did you know she was recently elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences? This prestigious organization was founded in 1780, during the American Revolution, by John Adams, John Hancock and 60 other scholar-patriots who understood that a new republic would require institutions and leaders able to gather and share knowledge and advance learning in service to the public good. It’s a big deal! We talked to Dr. O’Brien about the award, the global explosion of indigenous studies, and how she gives back to the next generations of scholars.
Q: Congratulations on your recent election to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, a national award. David Oxtoby, President of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, said the award winners “excel in ways that excite us and inspire us at a time when recognizing excellence, commending expertise and working toward the common good is absolutely essential to realizing a better future.” Please tell us your thoughts on how studying and amplifying history and Indigenous studies leads us to a better future.
A: Studying history helps explain why the world around us looks like it does and what we can do to make the world a better place. Knowing something about how the past has produced the present allows us to better understand the circumstances and lives of peoples, cultures, countries, and more. History at its best teaches empathy and understanding and the tools for making a better future. And as I always tell my students, "U.S. history IS Indian/Indigenous history." One cannot possibly understand the U.S. right now without knowing about the long history of Indigenous people and the struggles Indigenous people have faced within the structure of settler colonialism that produced the U.S. But as importantly, knowing something of Indigenous history helps explain our status as sovereign nations and vibrant peoples in the present looking to the future.
Q: Will there be an award ceremony at the University and may the public attend?
A: There was a nice acknowledgement of faculty and staff awards at the May meeting of the Board of Regents that I was thrilled to attend. There will be what I understand is an elaborate inauguration ceremony at the AAA&S headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts in spring 2023 with all of the inductees for 2022. There is a backlog of inductees because of the COVID pandemic: that induction will happen first, in the fall.
Q: You’ve mentored 31 Ph.D. students – another major career accomplishment. Did you realize when you started your teaching career in 1989 the potential impact you would have on so many other people?
A: I had no idea I would be so heavily involved in mentoring Ph.D. students when I started teaching at the UMN. It is one of my very favorite things about my job and I'm especially thrilled at the exponential growth in Indigenous graduate students in our programs. I currently advise fourteen more graduate students, ten of whom are Indigenous: we have at least three dozen Indigenous studies graduate students and we are well known internationally for our work in graduate education in the field. Our students are doing amazing things in the academy across the US and Canada and in institutions such as the Minnesota Historical Society. I also could never have imagined participating in the co-founding of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association, now the most significant professional association in global Indigenous studies. I organized our first official meeting of NAISA at the UMN in 2009.
Q: Bemidji State University has a new program focusing on environmentalism through an Indigenous lens, New Bemidji State degree draws on Indigenous practices to teach 21st century sustainability | MPR News. Do you see Indigenous studies continuing to develop in ways we perhaps can’t see today?
A: Indigenous studies is exploding in significance right now, and the field is incredibly far-reaching. Environmental studies is a vital component of our field and is growing dramatically. Indigenous people have a lot to teach the world about sustainability, food sovereignty, and creating the conditions of survival for the planet. But Indigenous studies reaches across virtually every field you can think of, well beyond the humanities and social sciences to law, medicine, and the hard sciences.
Q: When you're not lecturing, writing, mentoring and inspiring others - what do you like to do in your downtime?
A: My husband and I love to travel. He is an economist working in international trade, and I'm able to follow him around to lots of places, especially Spain and Latin America. I love to read, walk, tend to my container garden, and I love to cook.
