Hometown: Ankeny, Iowa
Faculty mentor: Stephen Warren, PhD, professor, Department of History, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Degree program and anticipated graduation date: Bachelor of Arts in history and social studies education, May 2025

Max Halbach looks at how the Ojibwe, a Native group in the western Great Lakes, contested American justice during the 1820s, using real and imagined kinship connections. Over the summer, they examined an 1824 murder committed on Lake Pepin (straddling the line between modern-day Wisconsin and Minnesota) to discuss how Ojibwe leaders used kinship to address the U.S. government’s administration of justice in this region. Ojibwe leaders portrayed the federal government as an imagined father figure, which had failed to fulfill its obligations. In turn, Ojibwe bands no longer cooperated with US agents, instead upholding a transcultural construction of justice that preserved Native power. While many historians have relied on settler-constructed sources and examined the murder as weakness of the federal administration, Halbach centralizes Ojibwe-constructed historical sources in their work.

After graduation, Halbach plans to pursue a PhD in history, teaching and researching European American and Native American diplomacy in early America.

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