Dr. Hayden L. Nelson
Gale Scholar, Research Historian at the Minnesota Historical Society
Environmental History; North American Wests; Borderlands
About Hayden
Hayden L. Nelson (Ph.D., University of Kansas, 2025) is an environmental historian of the North American West and its borderlands who studies how political and economic institutions have shaped the extraction, governance, and control of natural resources. His work explores how capitalism, climate change, colonization, and conservation have interacted to influence relationships between states, markets, communities, and the lands they inhabit.
His book project, tentatively titled The North Woods: An Environmental History, is derived from his dissertation, which won the KU History Department’s 2025 Outstanding Dissertation Award. The North Woods traces the political economy of environmental change in the transnational forested region of the western Great Lakes and Upper Mississippi watersheds from the emergence of the commercial fur trade through the end of industrial logging. The book examines how human societies transformed the forested environment from the early seventeenth century into the twentieth century through the fur trade, logging, and mining. These extractive enterprises integrated regional resources into expanding markets, altered property regimes, and slowly facilitated Indigenous dispossession over a much longer, more contingent trajectory than typically acknowledged. Colonization and the expansion of industry were thus inherently environmental processes simultaneously shaping and shaped by people, capital, and political institutions. By situating environmental change within the history of capitalism, colonization, and state formation, this book explores how the political economy of resource extraction unfolded in the North Woods over three centuries, leaving contested legacies embedded in the land, people, and cultural conceptions of place.
His broader research agenda uses the history of resource extraction and environmental change to examine the intertwined histories of capitalism, colonization, and state formation in North America. His published, forthcoming, and developing projects extend these questions across the nineteenth- and twentieth-century West. Some of these projects include property violence and the relationship between land, settlement, and environmental change during Bleeding Kansas; the role of the US military in facilitating Indigenous dispossession and protecting industrial ranching in the late-nineteenth-century northern Great Plains; women’s labor within the domestic economy of the early twentieth-century rural West; and the history of forest fires as both environmental events and products of changing political and economic relationships with forests. Together, these projects underscore major historical questions that guide his overall research profile, particularly how struggles over land, resources, and property have shaped American political economy while also revealing the limits of those institutions and the varied forms of resistance that challenged them.
In July 2025, Hayden began a two-year position as a Gale Scholar, Research Historian at the Minnesota Historical Society. Since Fall 2024, Hayden has also served as an Adjunct Professor of History at the University of Central Missouri, teaching online, asynchronous courses.
Selected Writing
This section only includes my published work. For more on current and forthcoming projects, please refer to my CV. Please reach out to me via email if you lack institutional access and are unable to read my works through the links provided below. I will happily share PDF copies of any of my published work.
Peer-Reviewed Articles and Book Chapters
Nelson, Hayden L. “From In‘zhúje‘waxóbe to Big Red Rock: Confronting the Settler Colonial Past and Present of Lawrence, Kansas.” In Shokhí: A Kanza Relative, a Monument, and Rematriation. Edited by C. Huffman, Tai S. Edwards, and Jay T. Johnson. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2026. pp.
Nelson, Hayden L. "The Colonization of Montana's Milk River Valley, 1879-1889." In The Missouri, America's Longest River: A Cultural and Environmental History. Edited by Jon K. Lauck and Harry F. Thompson. Sioux Falls: Center for Western Studies / Augustana University Press, 2026. pp. 223-232.
Nelson, Hayden L. "Smoke from their Fires; Or, Environment and Region in Canada and the Upper Midwest." Middle West Review Special Issue: Regional Geography(ies) of the Midwest 11, no. 1 (Fall 2024): 89-111.
Nelson, Hayden L. and Curtis Kekahbah, with C. Huffman and Tai S. Edwards. "Ín, Monyón, Shokhí (Rock, Theft, Returning Home): Rematriating In‘zhúje‘waxóbe." Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains 47, no. 2 (Summer 2024): 110-125.
Blog Posts and Encyclopedia Entries
Nelson, Hayden L. "Forest Fires." MNopedia, July 27, 2026.
Nelson, Hayden L. "Commercial Logging, 1839-1949." MNopedia, July 27, 2026.
Nelson, Hayden L. "Origins of Commercial Logging, 1821-1839." MNopedia, July 1, 2026.
Nelson, Hayden L. "The Past, Present, and Future of Forest Fires." NiCHE: Network in Canadian History & Environment / Nouvelle initiative canadienne en histoire de l'environement, June 13, 2026.
Nelson, Hayden L. "Virginia and Rainy Lake Company." MNopedia, January 21, 2026.
Teaching
During the final year of my Ph.D., I began teaching online, asynchronous courses as an Adjunct Professor of History at the University of Central Missouri. Since I began teaching at UCM in Fall 2024, I have taught US History to 1877 twice and US History from 1877 three times (four sections), including both full-semester and 8-week offerings. I enjoy thinking about new, engaging activities for students to not only learn about history but, perhaps just as importantly, about the practice of history. Some of these projects have included digital mapping, conducting oral histories, and using primary sources to analyze historical representations in video games and other digital media.
Student Testimonials
"I think the course content is incredibly important...My high school history classes were very surface level, so it was a nice change of pace to get really in-depth histories of events and, unfortunately, the people that were hurt most significantly...I'm really glad that I chose to take these two [courses] in particular, especially with everything going on in the world today...Because of these courses, I feel infinitely more educated on [the histories of slavery, Native American issues, LGBTQ+ issues, etc.]."
US History to 1877 and US History from 1877 Student (2026)
"Dr. Nelson is an amazing professor. He went above and beyond to accommodate my disabilities and gave excellent feedback on all work."
US History to 1877 Student (2026)
"Professor Hayden Nelson was an absolutely amazing professor this past semester. I was worried about taking an online history class but Dr. Nelson was a very attentive professor. He truly cares about his students and their learning and I learned so much from him and truly appreciate him."
US History to 1877 Student (2026)
"Usually online classes are hard to focus in because it's easy to get distracted. Dr. Nelson has the weeks laid out in a nice structure. He is very good at explaining things in lecture, and I can tell he enjoys doing it, which makes me excited to learn."
US History from 1877 Student (2026)
"I felt it was very helpful to learn not only about history in general, but how it has significantly impacted the environment around me, and how I can use that information to make informed decisions about my interactions with the environment in the future."
US History from 1877 Student (2025)
Public History Work and Curatorial Engagement
I am committed to making history more accessible and exciting to public audiences. This commitment began during my M.A., when I worked at the University of Montana's Archives and Special Collections. In this position, I collaborated with other archivists and Crow tribal members to create a display for the Crow medicine woman, Pretty Shield (see below). At the University of Kansas, I was an active member of a group of historians and community members working on a project to rematriate In‘zhúje‘waxóbe (lit. “sacred red rock”), informally known as Lawrence's "Big Red Rock," a sacred boulder stolen from the Kanza and co-opted into a settler colonial monument. In‘zhúje‘waxóbe was successfully returned to the Kaw Nation in the summer of 2023 and had its public unveiling and celebration in June 2024. For the 2023-2024 academic year, I served as the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Arts Research Integration Fellow at the Spencer Museum of Art. From Fall 2024 to Spring 2025, I volunteered at the Haskell Indian Nations University's Cultural Center and Museum to help process and catalog their archival collections.
I have leveraged these experiences into my current work at the Minnesota Historical Society, helping collaboratively reinterpret signage at MNHS-managed sites across the state by working with other research team members and the MNHS Native American Initiatives department. Thus far, I have contributed to the reinterpretation of signage at Split Rock Lighthouse, Historic Forestville, and Fort Ridgely. More recently, I researched, wrote, and collaborated with team members in developing signage at Historic Fort Snelling on Minnesota regiments during the Civil War. Numbering fifteen in total, these banners cover infantry, cavalry, and artillery regiments that fought from the Dakota badlands to Alabama, and everywhere in between. Two signs focus specifically on African Americans and mixed-descent peoples from Minnesota fighting on behalf of the United States. Taken together, the banners highlight Minnesota's contribution to the Civil War and its complicated position of fighting wars on two fronts: one to eliminate Dakota people and one to end slavery.
One of the major projects I worked on in late 2025 and early 2026 was as part of the research team behind the award-winning Minnesota Unraveled: Pulling on the Threads of Minnesota History podcast. I served as lead researcher or co-researcher for Eating the Iron Range: A Cultural Culinary History (Episode 205), All You See is Past: Histories of Star Knowledge (Episode 207), and She Is Here Now: Eliza Winston and Slavery in Minnesota (Episode 208). Following the positive reception to "She Is Here Now," I worked with my colleagues from that episode and the St. Anthony Falls Heritage Board to reinterpret existing signage for a historical marker on Eliza Winston and slavery in Minnesota. Along with working on research production for these episodes, I also served as a guest expert on Episode 204, "Beaver Tales: From Minnesota's Ice Age to Today."
Currently, I am part of a team working on a digital mapping exhibit of hockey in Minnesota. This work has involved investigating Native American precedents to modern hockey, as well as modern hockey among Indigenous communities and famous players. I am also researching the development of multiple accessible forms of hockey for people with disabilities, including sled (sledge) hockey, with Bloomington, Minnesota becoming home to the first organized sled hockey team in the United States in 1989.
Along with all of this, I have written several articles for MNopedia, an online, open-access resource managed by the MNHS (see the "Selected Writing" tab).
I am passionate about making history more accessible to the general public. In so doing, I derive great pleasure in sharing my love of history with diverse audiences. Below are photos and further explanatory text of some of Hayden's experiences in Public History and Curatorial Practice.
here-ing by Janine Antoni
During the 2023-2024 academic year, I served as the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Arts Research Integration Fellow at the Spencer Museum of Art. The majority of my fellowship year consisted of working with my supervisor, Dr. Joey Orr, and New York-based artist Janine Antoni on the completion and public programming for Antoni's environmentally embedded artwork, here-ing, located in remnant tallgrass prairie on KU Field Station lands. The artwork, which is made entirely by human footsteps and took shape over several years, had a public event in October 2023 to celebrate its completion. In Spring 2024, I spearheaded programming efforts at here-ing, which included giving a series of guided walks for a KU environmental studies course in April and developing a public program with Kansas poet and nature writer Lori Brack. This public program occurred over two days in June 2024 and included me leading the walk while providing the historical and environmental background of the site and the artwork, followed by a poetry reflection led by Brack, who then compiled individual thoughts into group poems. I spent many long hours at here-ing, not only in the sweltering Kansas heat and humidity, but also over the fall, winter, and spring, which allowed me to develop a relationship with that place and its environment across different seasons. I am grateful for the time I had working on here-ing to not only build those relationships to place but also the relationships I developed with the project team members.
For more information on here-ing, check out Janine Antoni's website.
Biichiweé / I'll Tell A Story
Poster Exhibit. Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library at the University of Montana. Missoula, Montana. Exhibit displayed October 2019-September 2020.
This exhibit centers on the Crow medicine woman, Shitchísh, otherwise known as Pretty Shield, utilizing her perspective to track the monumental shifts that she witnessed in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century Northern Plains. Some of these changes in Crow society included: consequences of increased warfare, the introduction of horses, first-hand accounts of smallpox epidemics, the introduction of guns, as well as some personal relationships that Shitchísh developed during her life, especially to her husband, Goes Ahead, and the writer and ethnographer, Frank Bird Linderman. Exhibit created by Hayden Nelson, Aaron Brien, and Hannah Soukup.
Great Lakes Fire History Digital Archive
I have created and curated a digital archive through Omeka on forest fires in the Great Lakes region during the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. This is a continuously evolving project that I am constantly working on and adding to. The archive endeavors to serve as a centralized resource of materials regarding Great Lakes forest fire history from repositories around the United States and Canada. It features a constantly growing number of primary sources, a timeline on major fire events, a suggested readings list, and more.
Nature / Travel
As an environmental historian, I am passionate about enjoying nature, traveling, and experiencing new cultures. Please enjoy some of my favorite images that showcase the beauty and diversity of both the environment and human cultures. All photographs are unedited and were taken by me on my iPhone X and, later, iPhone 14.
Get in Touch
Contact Hayden L. Nelson to discuss his published work, teaching, potential collaboration, speaking opportunities, or for any other inquiries.
