Emilie Connolly

In Vested Interests: Trusteeship and Native Dispossession in the United States (Princeton University Press) Emilie Connolly masterfully shows how it was not just Native American land that Americans used to build their continental empire; it was also Native wealth - in particular, money held in trust by the United States government. Beginning with the Senecas in the late 1790s, the burgeoning United States used Native trust capital to finance banks, canals, and other infrastructures of continental expansion. Drawn into this system of “fiduciary colonialism” to provide for their people across time, Connolly skillfully highlights how Native leaders envisioned what trusts could be, and how they used their annuities as long term investments in the public good. Innovative, exhaustive, and revelatory, Vested Interests reshapes how we must think of U.S. foreign relations and economic imperialism.