Brenden W. Rensink

Historian of the North American West, Borderlands, Indigenous Peoples, and Environment

Scholarship & Publications

Available Books

2022

The North American West in the Twenty-First Century

Editor. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2022.

[Purchase here]

2019

Essays on American Indian and Mormon History.

Co-edited with P. Jane Hafen. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2019.

[Purchase here]

– Winner, 2020 Metcalfe Best Anthology Book Award, John Whitmer Historical Association

2018

Native but Foreign: Indigenous Immigrants and Refugees in the North American Borderlands.
Connecting the Greater West Series. College Station: Texas A&M Press, 2018.
[Purchase here]        
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– Winner, 2019 Spur Award for the Best Historical Nonfiction Book from the Western Writers of America.
– January 2019 Great Plains Book of the Month, Center for Great Plains Studies

2017

The Joseph Smith Papers: Documents, Vol. 6: February 1838 – August 1839.
Salt Lake City: The Church Historian’s Press, 2017. Co-editors, Mark Ashurst-McGee and David Grua.
[Purchase here]

2016

The Joseph Smith Papers: Documents, Vol. 4: April 1834 – October 1835.
Salt Lake City: The Church Historian’s Press, 2016.  Co-editor, Matthew Godfrey.
[
Purchase here]

2015

Historical Dictionary of the American Frontier
Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2015. Co-author, Jay H. Buckley.
[Purchase here] 

(Info and Reviews here)

Public History Projects and Consulting

  • 2018-present
  • 2016-present
  • 2021-2022
    • Historical Consultant, Mazamas
  • 2018-2019
    • Historical Consultant, Native American Rights Fund

Book Chapters, Anthology Contributions:

  • 2022
    • “Introduction: Updating “Modern West” Histories for the 21st Century,” in Brenden W. Rensink, ed. The North American West in the 21st Century. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2022.
  • 2019
    • ‘A Candid Investigation’: Concluding Observations and Future Directions,” in P. Jane Hafen and Brenden W. Rensink, eds., Essays on American Indian and Mormon History, 246-254. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2019.
    • “Introduction,” co-authored with P. Jane Hafen, in P. Jane Hafen and Brenden W. Rensink, eds., Essays on American Indian and Mormon History, xi-xx.  Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2019.
  • 2011
    • “Cree Contraband or Contraband Crees: Early Montanan Experiences with Transnational Natives and the Formation of Lasting Prejudice, 1880-1885.” In Smugglers, Brothels, and Twine: Historical Perspectives on Contraband and Vice in North America’s Borderlands, Andrae Marak and Elaine Carey, eds., 24-43.  Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2011.
    • “Genocide of Native Americans: Historical Facts and Historiographic Debates.” In Genocide of Indigenous Peoples, Vol. 8 in Genocide: A Critical Bibliographic Series, Samuel Totten and Robert Hitchcock, eds., 15-36.  New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 2011.
  • 2008
    • “Nebraska and Kansas Territories in American Legal Culture: Territorial Statutory Context.” In The Nebraska-Kansas Act of 1854, John R. Wunder and Joann E. Ross, eds, 47-66. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2008.

 Journal Articles:

  • 2021
  • 2020
    • “Indigenous Peoples and North American Immigration History: A Historiographical Essay.” The Immigration and Ethnic History Newsletter LII, no. 1 (Summer 2020): 1, 6-7. 2,000 words.
  • 2010
    • “‘If a Passage Could be Found’:  The Power of Myth (and Money) in North American Exploration.”  We Proceeded On (May 2010): 8-17.
  • 2009
    • “Pursuing Wicozani (the Good Way of Life): Functional Adaptations through Dakota Lifeways,” coauthors Matthew Garrett, Joseph M. White, Sr., Adam Galovan and Kathryn Akipa.  AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples 5 (Fall 2009): 108-125.
    • “The Transnational Immigrant-Refugee Experience of Mexican Yaquis and Canadian Chippewa-Crees in Arizona and Montana.” Journal of the West 48 (Summer 2009): 12-19.
    • “The Sand Creek Phenomenon: The Complexity and Difficulty of Undertaking a Comparative Study of Genocide vis-à-vis the North American West.”  Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal 4:1 (Spring 2009): 9-27.
    • 2004
      • “The Myth of an Easy Passage to the Far East.” The Thetean 32 (2004): 111-130.

  Book Reviews:

  • 2022
    • Making a Modern U.S. West: The Contested Terrain of a Region and its Borders, 1898-1940,” by Sarah Deutsch. Annals of Wyoming, forthcoming.
    • Violence and Indigenous Communities: Confronting the Past and Engaging the Present, by Susan Sleeper Smith, Jeffrey Ostler, and Joshua L. Reid, eds. Journal of American History 109 (September 2022): 411-412.
  • 2021
    • A Line of Blood and Dirt: Creating the Canada-United States Border across Indigenous Lands, by Benjamin Hoy. Canadian Journal of History / Annales Canadiennes d’Histoire 56 (Winter 2021): 420-422.
  • 2019
    • Empire’s Tracks: Indigenous Nations, Chinese Workers, and the Transcontinental Railroad, by Manu Karuka. H-Diplomatic, November, 2019. https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=54313
    • Are We Not Foreigners Here? Indigenous Nationalism in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, Journal of American Ethnic History 38 (Summer 2019): 91-92.
  • 2018
    • Why You Can’t Teach U.S. History without American Indians, Susan Sleeper-Smith, et. al, eds, Native American and Indigenous Studies 5 (Spring 2018): 269-270.
  • 2017
    •  So Far and yet So Close: Frontier Cattle Ranching in Western Prairie Canada and the Northern Territory of Australia, by Warren M. Elofson. Journal of the West 54 (Fall 2017): 111-112.
    • Food Control and Resistance, by Tamara Levi, Journal of American History 104 (3): 775-776.
  • 2016
    • Territories of Empire: U.S. Writing form the Louisiana Purchase to Mexican Independence, by Andy Doolen, Journal of American History 103 (September 2016): 471-472.
    • The Memory of Stone: Meditations on the Canyons of the West, by Erv Schroeder, Bill McKibben, Marcia Bjornerud, and Simon J. Ortiz, Journal of the West 55 (Summer 2016): 85.
    •  Native Diasporas: Indigenous Identities and Settler Colonialism in the Americas, edited by Gregory D. Smithers & Brooke N. Newman, Journal of the West 55 (Summer 2016): 85.
    • From Treaty Peoples to Treaty Nation: A Road Map for All Canadians, by Greg Poelzer and Ken S. Coates, Great Plains Research 26 (Fall 2016): 141.
    • Bootleggers and Borders: The Paradox of Prohibition on a Canada-U.S. Borderlands, by Stephen T. Moore, Montana: The Magazine of Western History 66 (Spring 2016): 77-78.
    • The Mapmakers of New Zion: A Cartographic History of Mormonism, by Richard Francaviglia, Journal of Arizona History 57 (Spring 2016): 98-99.
    • Colonial Genocide in Indigenous North America, edited by Andrew Woolford, Jeff Benvenuto, and Alexander Laban Hinton, Ethnohistory, 63 (Spring 2016): 415-416.
    • Trout Culture: How Fly Fishing Forever Changed the Rocky Mountain West, by Jen Corrinne Brown, Journal of the West 55 (Winter 2016): 113-14.
    • Showdown in the Big Quiet: Land, Myth, and Government in the American West, by John P. Bieter, Jr., Journal of the West 55 (Winter 2016): 113.
  • 2015
    • Clearing the Plains: Disease, Politics of Starvation, and the Loss of Aboriginal Life, by James Daschuk. Historical Geography 43 (2015): 7-9.
    • Theodore Roosevelt Digital Library, website review, Western Historical Quarterly 46 (Autumn 2015): 399-400.
    • Framing Chief Leschi: Narratives and the Politics of Historical Justice, by Lisa Blee. Journal of American History 101 (March 2015): 1228-1229.
    • The Sea is Our Country, by Joshua Reid. Pacific Northwest Quarterly 106 (3): 140.
  • 2014
    • Recognition, Sovereignty Struggles, and Indigenous Rights in the United States: A Sourcebook, edited by Amy E Den Ouden and Jean M. O’Brien.  Journal of the West 53 (Spring 2014): 84.
    • Mapping Wonderlands: Illustrated Cartography of Arizona, 1912-1962, by Dori Griffin.  Journal of the West 53 (Winter 2014): 95.
    • Warrior Nations: The United States and Indian Peoples, by Roger L. Nichols.  The Journal of Arizona History 55 (Winter 2014): 507-508.
    • Blackfoot Redemption: A Blood Indian’s Story of Murder, Confinement, and Imperfect Justice, by William Farr.  Ethnohistory 61 (Spring 2014): 370-372.
    • At the Border of Empires, by Andrae M. Marak and Laura Tuennerman.  The Catholic Historical Review 100 (Spring 2014): 383-384.
    • Comparative Indigeneities of the Américas: Toward a Hemispheric Approach, edited by M. Bianet Castellanos, Lourdes Gutiérrez Nájera, and Arturo J. Aldama.  American Indian Quarterly 38 (Spring 2014): 277-280.
  • 2013
    • Kearny’s March: The Epic Creation of the American West, 1846-1847, by Winston Groom.  Military History of the West 42 (2013): 41-42.
    • Pacific Connections: The Making of the U.S.-Canadian Borderlands, by Kornel Chang.  Journal of American Ethnic History 33, no. 1 (Fall 2013): 94-95.
    • Murder State: California’s Native American Genocide, 1846-1873, by Brendan C. Lindsay.  Western Historical Quarterly 44 (Autumn 2013): 339.
    • The Invasion of Indian Country in the Twentieth Century: American Capitalism and Tribal Natural Resources, Second Edition, by Donald L. Fixico.  New Mexico Historical Review 88 (Spring 2013): 236-237.
    • Migrants and Migration in Modern North America: Cross-Border Lives, Labor Markets, and Politics, edited by Dirk Hoerder and Nora Faires.  Canadian Journal of History / Annales Canadiennes d’Histoire 47 (Spring 2013): 676-679.
  • 2012
    • Storied Landscapes: Ethno-Religious Identity and the Canadian Prairies, by Frances Swyripa.  Journal of the West 50 (Fall 2011): 83-84.
    • Troubled Trails: The Meeker Affair and the Expulsion of Utes from Colorado, by Robert Silbernagel. Montana: The Magazine of Western History (Spring 2012): 81-82.
  • 2010
    • Undermining Race: Ethnic Identities in Arizona Copper Camps, 1880-1920, by Phylis Cancilla Martinelli.  Journal of the West 49 (Fall 2010): 88.
    • A Gift of Angels: The Art of Mission San Xavier del Bac, by Bernard L. Fontana.  Journal of the West 49 (Fall 2010): 85.

 Blog Contributions:

Non-Refereed Publications:

  • 2020
  • 2019
  • 2012
  • 2008
    • “Addendum: Chippewa Cree Research Archives at Rocky Boy School.”  In Ed Stamper, Helen Windy Boy and Ken Morsette, Jr., eds, The History of the Chippewa Cree of Rocky Boy’s Indian Reservation, 223-234.  Box Elder, Montana: Stone Child College Press, 2008.
    • Historical Biographies of the Cherry County Independent (Valentine, NE), Valentine Democrat (NE), Western News-Democrat (Valentine, NE), Norfolk Weekly News and News-Journal (NE), Custer County Republican (Broken Bow, NE), McCook Tribune and Weekly-Tribune (NE), Omaha Daily Bee (NE), and Falls City Tribune (NE).  Nebraska Newspapers: Digitizing Nebraska’s History site. Available at http://nebnewspapers.unl.edu/.  
    • “The Omaha Daily Bee.”  JNews, University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Journalism and Mass Communications Alumni Magazine (Summer 2008): 20-21.
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