Misty Kay Peñuelas

Ms. Peñuelas received the Bachelors degree in History from the University of Texas at Austin in 1995 and the Masters in Medieval History from the University of Oklahoma in 2002. She entered the Ph.D. program in American Indian History at the University of Oklahoma in 2015. Currently, her dissertation project is an analysis of nineteenth-century Cherokee fiscal and monetary policy and the influence those policies may have had on twentieth century US monetary policy. Contrary to many depictions of Indian economies as cash-poor, subsistence affairs, the Cherokee Nation maintained a sophisticated fiscal and monetary policy, rooted almost entirely in fiat currency, which they creatively deployed to expand and sustain their enviable welfare state. Noting the interconnectedness of both policies and people between the Cherokee nation and the United States, she explores to what extent Cherokee policy influenced and shaped mainstream US monetary policy in the twentieth century.