Dydia DeLyser: scholar, writer, Geographer

In 1884 famous author and travel writer Helen Hunt Jackson took action to stop Americans from stealing Native land: she published a novel. What might seem a surprising way to raise awareness of a then-unpopular issue, was something Jackson came to in a burst of inspiration after years of painstaking research and the publication of “serious” articles had led her nowhere. But a romance that enchanted people could make them forget her serious message, it could, in her words “sugar the pill” and help White Americans right generations of wrongs.