Ysabela Golden is in the third year of the PhD program. Originally from Michigan, her research focuses on Indian Removal in that state, specifically the decade long period of limbo after the Treaty of Washington 1836. Though the U.S. Senate had made a last-minute edit to the (already signed) treaty, removing the permanent reservations the Odawa had been promised, American presence in the area proved too limited to force the Odawa out on the five-year timeline they'd intended. In her dissertation, Ysabela plans to examine the strategies that the Odawa pursued in the meantime to try to keep their land, particularly the "Native agricultural missions" that accessed bonus treaty funds through Protestant missionary intermediaries.
