Vivien Tejada

Vivien Tejada is Assistant Professor in UCLA's Department of History, specializing in 19th-century US history with focus on slavery, Native American history, and labor. Her current project 'Unfree Soil' examines coercion in the Upper Mississippi Valley, analyzing how federal policy and settler colonialism created unfreedom in ostensibly free territories.

Tejada's research intersects Native American dispossession with African American labor exploitation, investigating pre-14th Amendment citizenship adoption. As a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, she brings critical perspective to indigenous sovereignty and colonial legacies.

She co-organizes UCLA's History Brown Bag Seminar Series and has received numerous fellowships including from Stanford, Penn State, and Indiana University. Awards recognize scholarly excellence from Dartmouth College to professional organizations like the Forest History Society.

Published works analyze indigenous legal systems and historical agency debates, reflecting interdisciplinary engagement with law, anthropology, and critical race studies.