Jun 24, 2008 Issue | Updated Jul 2 4:06pm 
Apr 22, 2008 8:00 AM
In Memoriam
Melissa L. Meyer
Miriam Rom Silverberg
Maria Wrigley
Melissa L. Meyer, historian of American Indians, died April 9 of complications from a cerebral hemorrhage suffered the previous summer. She was 53.
Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, of mixed Irish, German and Eastern Cherokee heritage, Meyer graduated from the University of Cincinnati and went on to receive her Ph.D. in American history from the University of Minnesota in 1985. Already as a student, Meyer began her search for answers to questions about Native- American identity that would ultimately define her intellectual journey and scholarly career.
With the publication of "The White Earth Tragedy" in 1994, Meyer established her reputation as a leading scholar in her field. In it, she detailed the expropriation of land from the Anishinaabegs of the Great Lakes region from 1889 to 1920. Her research demonstrated the adaptivity of the Anishinaabegs in the face of migration, intermarriage, federal policy and corporate schemes. She also revealed how internal divisions tragically furthered the process of their dispossession. Her analysis of ethnicity among the Anishinaabegs at White Earth showed how distinctions between "mixed bloods" and "full-bloods" came to be framed and why they produced long-term consequences for the welfare of the White Earth bands. "The White Earth Tragedy" also thrust "blood" into the centerpiece of debates about tribal enrollment and the issues of intermarriage and historical experiences of individuals of mixed descent.
Across the next decade, Meyer expanded her analytical frame to explore belief and rituals concerning blood in regional and religious contexts throughout human history. She included the preliminary findings in "American Indian Blood Quantum Requirements: Blood is Thicker Than Family," one of 20 articles in an essay collection, "Over the Edge: Remapping the American West" (1999), edited by Blake Allmendinger and Valerie Matsumoto. In 2005, she published the magisterial "Thicker Than Water: The Origins of Blood as Symbol and Ritual," which one critic praised as a text that links discourses about blood with the myths, legends and science that are repeatedly used to explain "that most impossible of things: life." Even scholars who criticized Meyer's book praised its "unusual virtues."
Meyer was an active and engaged faculty member, both at UCLA and in the profession at large. In addition to being a member of the Department of History, she was associated with the UCLA American Indian Studies Center and with the American Indian Studies Interdepartmental Degree Program. She was also a longtime member of the Advisory Board, Center for American Indian Research and Education (CAIRE). During her years at UCLA, Meyer represented the History Department in the Academic Senate, and she served on Undergraduate Council as well as numerous History Department committees.
Meyer also participated in the American Historical Association, the Pacific branch of the American Historical Association, the Western Historical Association, the Organization of American Historians, and the American Society for Ethnohistory. She was a frequent member of prize and conference program committees.
A generous and attentive mentor, Meyer worked closely with undergraduate and graduate students alike. Her course materials blended American Indian autobiographies with contemporary issues that caught the attention of students. An undergraduate in the class she was teaching at the time of her stroke described her as "a great professor who was very enthusiastic about the material she taught, and it showed in her class." She inspired by example. One graduate student remembers her as never being afraid to "roll up her sleeves" and get into the trenches to demonstrate what good teaching was about, and doctoral students with whom she worked now teach at institutions like UC Berkeley, New Mexico State, Knox College, Loyola Marymount and UCLA. In her teaching as well as in her scholarship, Meyer insisted that Native Americans not be marginalized or romanticized, arguing for their central place in American history.
Meyer disdained the role of poseur. She was not an ivory tower intellectual. Although earning coveted teaching positions at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, Dartmouth College and UCLA, she worked tirelessly to reform the institutions and the bureaucratic practices that sometimes stood in the way of scholarly work, collegiality and good teaching. A self-described "child of the sixties," she challenged authority. She viewed asymmetries and abuse of power as intolerable. She was outspoken in her advocacy, courageous in adversity, and fiercely loyal to her friends.
She was as civic-minded as she was tough-minded. She applied her expertise in museology to assist in the design of a permanent exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of American History. She acted as a consultant on Native American issues for CBS News, the Smithsonian, the Minnesota Chippewa tribe, the U.S. Department of Justice, Indian Claims Division and the History Channel.
Meyer's untimely death has saddened her students and friends as well as her colleagues, both in the UCLA History Department and in the larger, national Native American studies community. She is survived by her mother, Helen Meyer; her sister, Diana Meyer-Margeson of Loveland, Ohio; her husband, Russell Thornton, a professor in the UCLA Department of Anthropology; her daughter, Tanis; and her son, Zane. Meyer dedicated "Thicker Than Water" to Tanis and Zane, and she clearly felt them to be her greatest source of inspiration. In countless scholarly conversations and e-mails to colleagues, she returned time and again to "those precious children."
This obituary can also be viewed at the UCLA Department of History's Web site.
Miriam Rom Silverberg, 57, professor of history and former director of the Center for the Study of Women, died March 16. Her field of research included modern Japanese thought, culture and social transformation; social and cultural theory; and comparative historiography. Her full obituary can be found at here....
Maria Wrigley, 89, died from lung cancer on March 27. She was the director of the International Visitors Bureau at UCLA for 30 years until she retired in 2002. Passionate about her job, Wrigley often returned to help out, even after retiring. To see a full obituary, go here.
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