The Missouri Epiphany- Part 2
October 28, 2025
I arose a week ago Friday in Rolla, grabbed some country ham and hashbrowns from a local eatery and headed southwest to Springfield for my next destination. After two nonstop days at Missouri S&T, I had another adventure planned at Missouri State University.
This time I was greeted by Julia Troche, a rockstar Egyptologist with an Ivy League pedigree. But I didn’t need to meet her until about 11:30 in the morning, meeting that I had just a little time to kill. So, what to do? Naturally, I stopped off at Buc-ee’s for a Mello Yello (unattainable in Colorado) before heading to Bass Pro Shops world headquarters (more on this later). When combined with the fact that I ate at Waffle House to start the day, pretty much I hit the trifecta of Americana in right there in Missouri. I dare you to do better.
Like Kate, I had never met Julia in person, though I talk to her every single day. Our first stop was doing an interview with the local NPR station where I got to talk about public history, what it is and why it matters. This never fails to abuse me considering how many public history jobs I applied for over the years in academia, only to see the university higher someone with a mapping project. How exciting. But I digress.
Converstions like this are important. People still care about the academy. The people still care about learning. We just have to do a better job of getting in front of them. I see so many people who write these books that are brilliant, and then they retreat into their offices, never to speak to the public again. I just don’t think that in our current situation we can afford to publish a university press book that sells for $55 and then consider our mission complete. What minds are we changing? What ideas are we getting out there? I’m not convinced that the academe really knows what it’s doing right now. Or maybe I am convinced of my own grandeur. Who knows.
But I had a lovely time talking to the station and that episode will be available on November 4. I’ll get a link to you when it’s ready. I’m excited for people to hear it. Somehow, I didn’t even curse.
Meeting the people at Missouri State was a real treat. It is a really phenomenal institution. I know some of their other faculty members and it’s a Murderer’s Row over there. And I was excited to get to see them in person. Missouri state is also deceptively huge. I believe the total enrollment is over 30,000 people and the campus is really cool. Plus you can get a Coca-Cola there which is pretty great.
Our big engagement that night was talking to Missouri State students and faculty and members of the public about my career as a historian, but focusing mostly on my experiences with Tribes. And it was here that I got to inform the students of all the fun parts of my life: that I flunked out of Murray state University (twice!), then I went back to a community college and eventually got my Ph.D. And then I went to work for the Seminole Tribe of Florida. And then I got fired by the Seminole Tribe of Florida. And eventually, I made my way to Colorado where I work with the Tribes out here.
During this talk I stressed that things happen in life sometimes that are out of your control. Because our young people need to hear those things. And frankly, so do our older adults. I talked about how it was my dream to be a professor one day and that never came true. The jobs just weren’t there. In some cases, the committees just didn’t like my style. In other cases, they didn’t think a middle aged white guy had any business teaching Native history— something I’ve heard more than once in the academe, but never on the reservation. Go figure.
But what I wanted to relay to the students was the joy that it gives me when I work with folks like the Southern Ute Indian Tribe or the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes, or the Kiowa Tribe or Comanche Nation. I wanted to share with them the meaning that those relationships give to my life. I wanted to talk about the ideas of service and commitment to communities that are not my own. And I hoped to broaden the ideas of what is possible for our audience members.
And we had such an amazing turnout. I think this speaks to the energy at Missouri State University and the amazing caliber of students there.
And oh my goodness y’all. After three days of being on campus, I realized how much I missed it. There’s so many problems in the university system right now. But I’m not ready to give up on it yet. Maybe I’m naïve. Realistically, I’m probably just stubborn. But that’s me in a nutshell anyway.
I was exhausted when my time in Missouri came to an end. And I was even more exhausted after my flight was delayed by seven hours. But this is the way of things I guess. And that’s the story I tell in a microcosm: things don’t always go your way. But you just keep going anyway.
I thought a lot about the friends I saw over the three days and the new friends I made as well. And I guess here’s my big epiphany: after being told no by so many universities, I’ve been told that I don’t speak enough jargon or that I was too plain spoken to be a “real” professor, here I was spending a week talking to faculty at two amazing universities about how to do better public facing work. And after being told I wasn’t qualified to talk about things like race and inequality in the United States, I make my current living trying to help the needs of Indigenous people whose homelands are here in Colorado and Kansas. I couldn’t help but chuckle when I realized I was getting paid to do what I have been told I could not do so many times over and over again.
I think you get told no so many times that that you internalize your life as a loss. Then you lift your head up, look around, and realize you were doing the job anyway. So when you hear voices that tell you no, go find new voices.
More posts coming tomorrow.
J
This has been fun to read. Lots of good things happening in the midwest as well as good people. Hearing about the young people who are still interested in learning is heartening. I have a lot of respect for your passion about the tribes as well.
I really enjoyed hearing about your visit to Missouri. Sounds like you've been following your North Star all along! Keep up the good fight. Your wisdom, kindness, and maturity are needed.