Sam Schirvar

Sam Schirvar is a historian of political economy in the United States and Native America during the twentieth century. As Postdoctoral Fellow at the Charles Warren Center, Sam is working on his book project, Manufacturing Self-Determination, which argues that the resurgence of Indigenous political power in the twentieth century United States was founded in tribal governments’ expanded roles as investors, employers, and planners. It charts the transformation of Indian reservation economic development from schemes to entice private capital which ultimately failed, to a successful program of tribally-owned direct public investment. Remarkably, while non-Native state and local governments in the US depicted cuts to public services as essential to their survival after the 1970s, tribal governments expanded public-sector employment and services through state-owned enterprises, which they understood to be essential to their sovereignty.

Sam completed his Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania in 2026. His research has also been funded by the Jefferson Scholars Foundation, Smithsonian Institution, Hagley Library, Charles Babbage Institute, and the American Philosophical Society, among others.Sa