Brenden Rensink

Brenden W. Rensink is the assistant director of the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies and an assistant professor of history at Brigham Young University. He has a doctorate in history from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He is the author of Native but Foreign: Indigenous Immigrants and Refugees in the North American Borderlands (2018) and articles and books chapters on North American West, Indigenous and Borderlands histories. He co-authored the Historical Dictionary of the American Frontier (2015) and co-edited Documents Vol. 4 and Documents Vol. 6 of the Joseph Smith Papers (2016 and 2017) and the forthcoming Essays on American Indians and Mormons (2019). He is also the project manager and general editor of the Intermountain Histories digital public history website and mobile app project, and the host and producer of the Writing Westward Podcast.

Black and white image of several people and a horse standing in front of teepees. A dog howls in the mid-foreground.

Ignored and deported, Cree ‘refugees’ echo the crises of today

January 28, 2019Immigration Rewind

Indigenous Crees lived in the northern Plains long before the US-Canada border divided the region. But bisected by the line and labeled “foreign” Indians in the US, Cree were denied basic necessities, work — and eventually, even the right to stay in the country.