Heidi Katter

Heidi Katter is a Ph.D. student in U.S. History with a focus on Native American history, environmental history, the history of cartography, and settler colonialism. She currently researches how the federal government coopted Indigenous knowledge to forward treaty- and policymaking from the Northwest Ordinance through the early twentieth century. She is passionate about rereading the colonial archive to perceive how federal agents (mis)translated information provided by Native peoples to facilitate extractive and settler colonial interests. 

Heidi has drawn inspiration from and enjoyed building interdisciplinary relationships with a variety of scholars as a Whitney Environmental Humanities Graduate Fellow and a RITM Graduate Fellow. As a Silliman College Graduate Affiliate, she is excited to speak with undergraduates about their interests and experiences at Yale.

Heidi received her B.A. in History from Yale and her M.Phil. in American History from the University of Cambridge. She also served as a research assistant for Professor Ned Blackhawk while he completed his National Book Award-winning The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History (2023).