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Tai Edwards

Tai Edwards PhD

Professor, history
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Tai S. Edwards – Professor of History (Ph.D. University of Kansas, M.A. George Mason University, B.S. University of Kansas) and Director of JCCC’s Kansas Studies Institute (jccc.edu/KansasStudies). Dr. Edwards teaches U.S. History, History of North American Indians, and Kansas History.

Dr. Edwards’ scholarship focuses on North American colonization, U.S. imperialism, and North American Indigenous peoples’ history. She co-edited (with c. huffman and Jay T. Johnson) Shokhí: A Kanza Relative, a Monument, and Rematriation (University Press of Kansas, 2026), which brings together essays, poetry, oral histories, and art to discuss how Kaw Nation citizens reunited with a Grandfather Rock that the city of Lawrence, Kansas, spent nearly a century using as a monument to the town’s founders. She also co-edited (with Samantha Gill and Stephanie Bennett) Lyda Conley and the Fight to Preserve Huron Indian Cemetery (UPK, 2026) – the first book-length examination of the first Indigenous woman to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court. In addition to Conley’s biography, this text includes oral histories with Wyandot relatives, transcriptions of newspaper articles, treaties, government documents, and more. Farina King, Kiara Vigil, and Dr. Edwards also co-edit UPK’s “Lyda Conley Series on Trailblazing Indigenous Futures.” Dr. Edwards’ first book, Osage Women and Empire: Gender and Power (UPK, 2018) examined how Osage gender complementarity produced the rise of an Osage “empire” in the 18th century and informed Osage resistance to U.S. settler colonialism in the 19th century.

As Kansas Studies Institute (KSI) director, Dr. Edwards has collaborated on many projects, including Humanities Kansas’ Stories of the Vietnam War and recording veterans’ oral histories. Dr. Edwards has worked with the Quindaro Ruins Project and the Western University Association board to preserve and document the history of Quindaro townsite in Kansas City, Kansas – the first free port on the Missouri River in the 1850s, home to Wyandot, Euro-American, and African American families that later became the site of the first HBCU (historically Black college/university) west of the Mississippi River. She is also one of the collaborators on K-State’s Chapman Center for Rural Studies’ Kansas Land Treaties Project that creates educational resources about Kanza history (kansastreaties.com), including annotated treaties, short documentaries, and materials for teachers.

Dr. Edwards has served in many capacities, including: on the Kansas Association of Historians board; the Kansas Association for Native American Education board; the Kansas Advisory Council for Indigenous Education Working Group Essential Understandings Taskforce; as chair of JCCC’s Academic Branch Council shared governance body; and as co-chair of the History and Political Science department.