Dr. Matthew Sparacio • July 2025
Matthew Sparacio is a lecturer of Colonial and Native American History at Georgia State University. He previously taught at Southeastern Oklahoma State University after receiving his Ph.D. in History from Auburn University. His research focuses on Native health cultures in the Southeast United States, pre- and post-Removal Choctaw history, Native depictions in settler print culture, and the military occupation of Indian Territory (present-day Eastern Oklahoma). He is the former director of the “Fort Washita Rediscovery Project,” a collaborative initiative with the Chickasaw Nation that was awarded the 2023 Bruce T. Fisher Award by the Oklahoma Historical Society for the best public-facing history project in the state.
He is also the creator of the Native Atlanta Project at GSU examining settler depictions of indigenous peoples in the New South. His research has been published in Ethnohistory and his first book, The Choctaw Civil War: Justice and Sovereignty on the Franco-Choctaw Frontier, is currently under contract with the University of Alabama Press. His newest project, inspired by a 2022 NEH Summer Institute, recasts almanacs as manuals of settler colonialism and indigenous erasure.
Public Programs
Monday, July 14 • 2:00 PM • Campbell House • University of West Alabama
Wednesday, July 23 • 12:00 PM • Pebble Hill • Lunch provided, RSVP to mwilson@auburn.edu by Thursday, July 17
Language, Law, and Understanding Choctaw Sovereignty in the Eighteenth Century
This presentation looks to explain a moment of violent factionalism as an outgrowth of contested visions of Choctaw sovereignty in the mid-eighteenth century. Even though Choctaw clans and districts shared ideas of law and obligation, they nevertheless looked to push opposing foreign policies. These movements therefore challenged foundational aspects of Choctaw culture and society. By using Chahta anumpa (choctaw language), we can better understand the priorities of these emerging political factions in the eighteenth century as, perhaps, our own divided times today.