Joshua Friedlein

Joshua Friedlein is a Ph.D. student in American Studies at Yale University. He is ᏣᎳᎩᎯ ᎠᏰᎵ ᎨᎲᎢ, an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation. His research examines the violence of industrial forestry in the U.S. Pacific Northwest and Turtle Island more broadly, with a critical eye towards afterlives of violence and new tactics of resource extraction. He is a multidisciplinary scholar with experience in Native American and Indigenous studies, public and digital humanities, and environmental history.

Prior to matriculating at Yale, he worked for the University of Minnesota as a Tribal Wildfire Specialist, analyzing Tribal perspectives on climate-adaptive forestry research across the United States and Canada. He is a Public Humanities Consultant for the Indigenous Chicago project at the Newberry Library, and a member of ᏗᎦᏓᏤᎵᎢ, the Cherokee Scholars group.

Joshua holds a Master of Forestry from the Yale School of the Environment (2023), and a B.S. in History from Portland State University (2018). He was born and raised on Indigenous Lands situated within the territorial claims of the state of Oregon—Lands which continue to be stewarded by the Confederated Tribes of the Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw Indians; the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde; the Confederated Tribes of the Siletz Indians; and the Cow Creek Band of the Umpqua Tribe of Indians.