Heather Daly

Heather Ponchetti Daly is a tribal member of the Iipay Nation of Santa Ysabel and is a
historian of Twentieth Century Native America. She received her Ph.D. in History from UCLA and is a member with the UCSD Indigenous Futures Institute. She was awarded the 2023 UC San Diego--Barbara & Paul Saltman Distinguished Teaching Award and the UC San Diego Teaching + Learning Commons Changemaker Anti-Racist Pedagogy Fellowship.

Her first book American Indian Freedom Controversy will examine and tells the story of the tribal bands of Mission Indians in Southern California targeted by the passage of House Concurrent Resolution 108 in 1953. It concentrates on the individuals within tribal nations who participated in the political resistance movements that emerged before and during the
implementation of the Indian Reorganization Act and came to fruition during termination. In addition, her research focuses on the navigation strategies of Native American tribes, specifically California Indian Country through the labyrinth of federal Indian policies, including the legal machinations of reserve water rights.

Currently, Dr. Ponchetti Daly is appointed to the UC NAGPRA Implementation and Oversight Committee for the California Native American Heritage Commission representing UCLA. She is involved in the Scripps Institute of Oceanography cookbook project titled San Diego Seafood, Then and Now. She is writing about the history of these foods and of the region. This project is important to demonstrate that La Jolla and San Diego were the regions that the Kumeyaay lived,
worked, and prepared food. Her future research engages food sovereignty as both practice and theory; specifically, she is actively designing the Indigenous Food Sovereignty Lab at UC San Diego.

Before joining the History Department, Dr. Ponchetti Daly was a Lecturer in the Environmental Studies Department teaching Indigenous Approaches to Climate Change, Environmental Law and Federal Indian Policy Law, and Indigenous Food Sovereignty classes.

Her research and teaching interests include twentieth-century Native American History, specifically in California Indian Country, Native American and Constitutional Law, grassroots activism and Indigenous Food Sovereignty.

• Thorne, Tanis C. and Daly, Heather Ponchetti. El Capitan Adaptation and Agency on a Southern California Indian Reservation, 1850 to 1937 Photo Essays. Malki-Bellena Press, Banning, CA, 2012
• “Fractured Relations at Home: The 1953 Termination Act’s Effect on Tribal Relations throughout Southern California Indian Country” American Indian Quarterly, Vol. 33, No. 4. Edited by Amanda Cobb, 2009

• Book Review. Unrecognized in California: Federal Acknowledgement and the San Luis Rey Band of Mission Indians by Olivia Chilcote (American Historical Review, TBD)

• Book Review. Diverting the Gila: The Pima Indians and the Florence-Casa Grade Project, 1916–1928 By David H. DeJong. (Western Historical Quarterly, Spring 2023).

• Book Review. Indians on the Move: Native American Mobility and Urbanization in the Twentieth Century by Douglas K. Miller. (The History Teacher Vol. 53, No. 3 May 2020)

• Book Review. Reservations Removal and Reform The Mission Indian Agents of Southern California by Valerie Sherer Mathes and Phil Brigandi. (H-California 2019 Commissioned by Khal Schneider)

• Book Review. American Indian Nations from Termination to Restoration, 1953-2006 by RobertaUlrich. Western Historical Quarterly. Volume XLII-Number 4, 2011.