On May 17^th, 2025, Dr. Theresa Strouth Gaul, in collaboration with co-editors and contributors, published Being in Relation: Indigenous Peoples, the Land, and Texas Christian University, 1873-2023. The book, published by TCU press, tells the story of TCU’s relationships with the land and Native peoples since the university’s founding. Centering the perspectives of Indigenous people within TCU, the DFW community and beyond, the book presents an engaging combination of first-person narratives and academic essays that will teach well in the classroom. The book recounts the history of TCU’s acquisition of the lands it resides upon, presents insights on teaching with TCU’s land acknowledgment, provides eye-opening insights into Indigenous students’, faculty and staff experiences while at TCU, and offers advice to university leaders on how to further develop respectful and reciprocal relationships with Indigenous people and communities and to university faculty and staff on how to partner with Native community organizations to enhance pedagogy. 

In Gaul’s own words, “I'm so grateful to have had the chance to work with the amazing contributors, co-editors and content in Being in Relation: Indigenous Peoples, the Land, and Texas Christian University, 1873-2023. This book has touched my heart, and I'm so eager for others to read and teach from the volume!"

"The book has grown out of the work committed people at TCU and in the local Indigenous community have put into TCU’s Native American and Indigenous Peoples Initiative over the last decade. The English Department and AddRan College of Liberal Arts have been supporters of this effort since the beginning.” 

"[This book is] an Indigenous-centered, candid consideration of what it takes for Native communities and institutions of higher education to work together to build healthy relationships. The individual chapters provide perspectives from TCU students, alumni, faculty, staff and community members."

The book was co-edited by Gaul, professor of English and director of the TCU Core Curriculum, Scott Langston, retired instructor in religion and TCU’s inaugural Native American Nations and Communities Liaison and C. Annette Anderson, a member of TCU’s Native American Advisory Circle and a valued community mentor for TCU faculty and students. Contributors to the volume include AddRan College of the Liberal Arts alumni Albert Nungaray and Lauren Denham as well as an array of other TCU students, faculty, staff and alumni. Indigenous scholar and Fort Worth native Patrisia Gonzales wrote the foreword to the volume. 

To celebrate the publication of the book, Gaul participated in a book launch party at Texas Native Health, where she and other contributors shared their work and thanked participants and the DFW Indigenous community. Gaul writes that the "support and generosity [of the local Native community] in leading TCU toward respectful relationships has been the foundation upon which the initiatives described in the book have relied."