Native American and Indigenous Studies Scholar & Artist
Blaire Morseau is a citizen of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians, beadwork artist, and Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Michigan State University where she is also Affiliate Faculty in Digital Humanities and American Indian and Indigenous Studies. Before becoming a professor, she worked as her tribe's first full-time archivist, launching an online collections and dictionary website called Wiwkwébthëgen using Potawatomi cultural protocols of access and traditional knowledge labels. As Co-Director of The Indigenous Chicago Project, Blaire also helped shape the project's components which include oral histories, digital maps, curricular materials and more, that explore the histories of the region, centering Indigenous voices, laying bare stories of settler-colonial harm, and gesturing toward Indigenous futures. Her expertise is in Indigenous futurisms and science fiction with research interests in digital humanities, counter-mapping, and tribal archives. She recently released an edited volume titled, As Sacred to Us: Simon Pokagon’s Birch Bark Stories In Their Contexts and her debut monograph, Mapping Neshnabé Futurity: Celestial Currents of Sovereignty in Potawatomi Skies, Lands, and Waters, will be available in May.
morseaub at msu dot edu
Select List of Publications
Books
Morseau, B., Ed. (2025). Mapping Neshnabé Futurity: Celestial Currents of Sovereignty in Potawatomi Skies, Lands, and Waters. University of Arizona Press. (purchase)
Morseau, B., Ed. (2023). “As Sacred to Us” Simon Pokagon’s Birch Bark Stories in their Contexts. Michigan State University Press. (purchase)
Chapters
Morseau, B. (2024) “Indigenizing Futures in Museum Contexts.” In The Future is Indigenous: Stories from the new Native North America Hall at the Field Museum, Wali, Alaka and Tom Skwerski (eds.). BAR. pp. 220-224. (purchase)
Morseau, B. (2023). “Coding Potawatomi Cosmologies: Elements of Bodwéwadmi Futurisms.” In The Routledge Companion to CoFuturisms, Chattopadhyay, Bodhisattva, Grace Dillon, Isiah Lavender III, and Taryne Jade Taylor (eds.), Routledge Literature Handbooks (New York, NY), 153–61. (download)
Articles
Topash-Caldwell, B. (2020). Sovereign Futures in Neshnabé Speculative Fiction, Borderlands Journal, 19(2): 29-62. (download)
Topash-Caldwell, B. (2020). “Beam Us Up, Bgwëthnėnė!” A Discussion of Indigenizing Science (Fiction), Technology, Engineering, and Math, AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples, 16(2): 81-89. (download)
Artwork
Blaire combines traditional Potawatomi designs with futurist and pop culture references to tell multi-layer stories in her beadwork. Some of Blaire’s work is on permanent display at Four Winds Casino Resort in South Bend, IN and will be on permanent display at the Pokagon Band Peace and Justice Center in Dowagiac, MI. See more here.