Alice B. Kehoe

Fellow Type
Visiting Fellow
Fellowship
Archibald Hanna, Jr. Fellowship in American History
Fellowship Year
2010-2011
Project Title/Topic
Felix and Lucy Kramer Cohen, Architects of the Indian New Deal
Affiliation/Department
University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
Biography

Alice retired several years ago as Professor of Anthropology, Marquette University, Milwaukee WI. She remains active professionally, in the American Anthropological Association, Society for American Archaeology, American Society for Ethnohistory, and other organizations.After studying anthropology at Barnard College, Alice completed a Ph.D. in the subject at Harvard. She had married a fellow archaeologist, Thomas F. Kehoe, and worked with him on excavations in northern Montana and Saskatchewan as well as ethnographic research with Blackfoot, Plains Cree, and other Northern Plains First Nations. Her archaeological projects include excavation of a 1768 fur trade post, bison pounds, and a 2000-year-old astronomical observatory made of lines of boulders on a high hill in Saskatchewan (Moose Mountain “medicine wheel”); ethnograhic projects include the Blackfoot Language Immersion School and the tribal college on the Montana Blackfeet Reservation, as well as her dissertation research on the 1890 Ghost Dance religion.Kehoe’s publications include North American Indians: A Comprehensive Approach(PrenticeHall, 3rd ed. 2006); America Before the European Invasions (Longman, 2002); Controversies in Archaeology (Left Coast Press, 2008), and several Waveland Press undergraduate texts: Shamans and Religion (2000), The Kensington Runestone (2005), and The Ghost Dance: Ethnohistory and Revitalization (2nd ed. 2006). Among her contributions to edited volumes are studies of the militant Christian Right, feminist archaeology, postcolonial archaeology, and history of archaeology ( in addition to her 1998 Routledge book, The Land of Prehistory: A Critical Study of American Archaeology). Kehoe’s project at the Beinecke involves the Felix Cohen and Lucy Kramer Cohen papers: Felix Cohen wrote the legal framework of the 1930s Indian New Deal, with Lucy assisting with both the historical research on Indian policies and law, and with conducting conferences with First Nations leaders to learn their needs, wants, and preferences. She had worked for, as well as studied with, Franz Boas. Boas’ influence on the Indian New Deal has not been recognized, nor has Lucy Kramer’s career as a public health statistician after her husband’s early death.