Emilie Connolly, "Vested Interests: Trusteeship and Native Dispossession in the United States" (Princeton UP, 2025)

Jan 21, 2026

Emilie Connolly, an Early American historian and professor at Brandeis University, dives into her book discussing the intricate relationship between federal trusteeship and Native dispossession. She explains 'fiduciary colonialism' and how the U.S. government used withheld payments to coerce Native nations into ceding land. Connolly highlights the strategic responses of Native peoples, from investing in education to legal challenges, while linking historical practices to current disputes over resources and sovereignty. Her insights illuminate the lasting impact of these fiscal relationships.

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INSIGHT

Trust Funds Bridge Finance And Colonialism

Connolly found Indian trust funds linked financial history with Native dispossession.
That discovery reframed colonialism as embedded within 19th-century capitalist expansion.

INSIGHT

Compensation Used To Control Wealth

The U.S. bought Native land with annuities and trust funds to control Native wealth over time.
Emilie Connolly shows that spreading payments granted officials leverage to coerce further dispossession.

INSIGHT

Leverage Through Withheld Payments

Officials withheld future annuity installments to force treaties, removals, or compliance.
Connolly calls this tactic a way of "weaponizing compensation."

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From the earliest days of its founding, the United States set its sights on Native territory. Amid better-known “Indian wars,” the federal government quietly built an empire by treaty, offering payments to Native peoples for their land. Routinely inadequate, these payments were nonetheless pivotal because federal officials chose not to deliver them as a lump sum. Instead, the government kept the bulk of payments owed to Native nations under its own control as a trustee, and made access to future installments contingent on Native compliance. In Vested Interests: Trusteeship and Native Dispossession in the United States (Princeton UP, 2025), Dr. Emilie Connolly describes how a system of “fiduciary colonialism” seized a continent from its original inhabitants—and, ironically, furnished Native peoples with financial resources that sustained their nations.
Connolly documents two centuries of dispossession in the guise of fiduciary benevolence. Acting as both dispossessor and trustee, the federal government invested Native wealth in state bonds that financed banks, canals, and other infrastructural projects that enabled the country to expand further westward. Meanwhile, Native peoples protected the money they did receive for future generations, investing it in their own institutions and mounting legal challenges to hold their trustees accountable. Still, federal trusteeship placed tight constraints on Native economies with the aim of containing Native power, forcing nations to endure through sheer resilience and ingenuity. By chronicling the long history of Native land dispossession through financial paternalism, Vested Interests reveals the unequal dividends of colonialism in the United States.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

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