According to the WHA constitution, the Executive Director shall notify the membership of the Nominating Committee’s selection for President-Elect. Members may then nominate additional candidates by petition containing not fewer than fifty signatures of association members. The constitution allows the Executive Director until August 1 to receive any such nominations with the fifty-member signature petition. The Nominating Committee’s selection for President-Elect is R. David Edmunds.

R. David Edmunds is Watson Professor of American History at the University of Texas at Dallas. He was born in Springfield, Illinois, and was fortunate to be raised by Russell and Eunice Edmunds, parents who worked hard to provide him with educational opportunities denied to them by the Great Depression. Edmunds received his B.A. from Millikin University, in Decatur; an M.A. from Illinois State University; and a Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma, where he was privileged to study under Donald J. Berthrong and A. M. Gibson. Berthrong’s and Gibson’s kindness and generosity toward their graduate students provided Edmunds with a model toward which he still strives.

Edmunds has taught at the University of Wyoming, Texas Christian University, Indiana University, and the University of Texas at Dallas. He has served as a visiting professor at Macalester College, the University of California at Berkeley, U.C.L.A., San Diego State University, SUNY-Pottsdam, and the University of Wisconsin at Green Bay. Edmunds also directed the Archives Management Program at Texas Christian University, and in 1990–1991 served as the Acting Director of the Center for the History of the American Indian at the Newberry Library. He serves as a consultant to many museums, documentary film-producers, and commercial and university presses. During the past two decades Edmunds has worked extensively as a historical consultant in the support of tribal governments in major land cases against both state and local governments. 

Edmunds’ research focuses upon the history of Native American people, particularly Native American biography, and the history of the Indian people of the Great Lakes region, the Ohio Valley, and in Oklahoma. He has written or edited ten books, and over one hundred articles or essays in journals or other scholarly publications. The Potawatomis: Keepers of the Fire received the 1978 Francis Parkman Prize; The Shawnee Prophet was awarded the 1984 Ohioana Prize for Biography, and was nominated for a Pultizer; The Fox Wars: The Mesquakie Challenge to New France (co-authored by Joseph L. Peyser) received the Heggoy Prize from the French Colonial Historical Society. 

Edmunds has received teaching awards from five universities. His research has been supported through grants or fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the Newberry Library, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Guggenheim Foundation, Texas Christian University Research Foundation, Indiana University, and the University of Texas at Dallas. In 1985 he was honored as the “Honorary Tribal Historian” of the Citizen Band Potawatomi Nation, and in 1998 he received the Award of Merit from the American Indian Historians Association. In 2002–2003 he served as the president of the American Society for Ethnohistory.

A member of the Western History Association since 1967, Edmunds first attended (and presented a paper) at the 1968 WHA meeting in Tucson. With three exceptions, he has attended every WHA meeting since. Edmunds has served the WHA as a member of the editorial board of the WHQ (1982–1985); the Nominating Committee (1986–1988); the Program Committee (1989–1990); the WHA Prize Committee (1989–1992); the Committee on Affiliated Associations (1992–1995); the WHA Council (1999–2001); and the Award of Merit Committee (2002–2004). In 2003, he served as the Local Arrangements Chairperson for the Fort Worth meeting.

A dedicated fisherman, bird-watcher, and a “gourmand of Mexican food, barbeque, and fry-bread,” Edmunds describes himself as “an evangelist for both Native American and western history, masquerading as an academic.” He is cared for (and “kept on a tight rein”) by his wife Sally, who also is a member of the WHA. Edmunds continues to believe that the Western History Association remains the most open and least pretentious of the major academic historical associations. He encourages all people who are interested in the American West to attend and participate in the association’s meetings.