Dean Michel

Dean Michel is a doctoral candidate writing a dissertation entitled: “A Watery Grave in the Desert: Termination, Survivance, and the Chemehuevi Indian Tribe.” “A Watery Grave in the Desert” explores how federal policies and dam building created a crisis for his ancestors that resulted in the detribalization of the community and a sustained struggle of tribal members to reclaim their relationship to their homelands. This crisis, in many ways, was born out of competing understandings of water and the environment more generally, one where federal and other non-Indigenous actors saw the Colorado River as the solution to unshackle settlers from the land’s constraints. On the other hand, Chemehuevi and Nüwüvi more broadly understood the Southwest’s water as sacred touchstones in a vast array of oases and temporary watering holes. Their contested understanding defined the Indigenous attempts to rebuild amid shattered homeland and identity. Ultimately, this research emphasizes Indigenous history and environmental studies to explore the contested understandings of water in the American southwest during the 20th century.

Michel presented his research at the Western History Association, Native American and Indigenous Studies Association, American Society for Environmental History, American Society for Ethnohistory, and American Historical Society. Michel published reviews at Western Historical Quarterly, H-Net AmIndian and Ethnohistory. He further has a chapter in Rescuing the Nation from Amnesia edited by Patricia Limerick.

Michel served as a Mellon Fellow in the Democracy and Landscape Initiative at Dumbarton Oaks Harvard Trusteeship in Washington DC. Michel was also an Allen Morris Fellow, Wallace W. Reichelt Oral History Fellow, and a Fellow at Florida State’s Native American and Indigenous Studies Center.

Michel won the 2025-2026 Carter Manny Writing Award from the Graham Foundation. Michel was further awarded the Granville L. Larimore Endowment for Excellence in Arts and Sciences Scholarship, the Martin-Vegue Dissertation Fellowship Award, Graduate Service Award, and the Dean's Award for Continuing Students.