Examining Indigenous Historiography
Reframing history through blatant honesty and mindful language
For most children, romanticized and untruthful stories of Christopher Columbus, Thanksgiving, and Pocahontas constitute the entirety of their Indigenous education. These narratives are problematic because they paint Indigenous people as “savages” or peaceful helpers to a righteous American mission.
Since the United States’ beginnings, scholarship rarely challenged this notion of exceptionalism, and America’s fight against fascism and communism in the twentieth century only added to the country’s assumed greatness.
During the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, a multiculturalism framework arose, which finally acknowledged how each minority contributed to a diverse American identity. However, it served as “an insidious smoke screen” (Dunbar-Ortiz, 5) for Indigenous communities by implying the erasure of America’s colonialist past and Native experiences of oppression.
Dismantling this smoke screen, many contemporary scholars of Indigenous history tell a more truthful, non-Eurocentric Native American history, despite contentions and limitations in language use and arguments, to combat American exceptionalism stories and address present-day Indigenous issues.
By pulling Indigenous peoples’ perspectives out from the shadows, Daniel Richter’s 2003 book, Facing East From Indian Country, centers Native Americans at the heart of the history of North American land, unearthing overlooked facts that disprove Eurocentric single stories.
Uniquely engaging the reader, Richter starts by painting a picture, looking through the Gateway Arch, known as the Thomas Jefferson National Expansion Memorial. In the background sits the St. Louis Courthouse, where Dred and Henrietta Scott, a Black couple, monumentally sued for their freedom. However, hidden underground lies the Museum of Westward Expansion, which portrays the detrimental impact of colonial conquest on Indigenous people (Richter, 1–2).
The outstanding visibility of the National Expansion Memorial represents how a white story and perspective, no matter how tainted by racism, will always dominate America’s history and present. While this white narrative has only recently opened up to Black stories of oppression and resistance, Indigenous history continues to go overlooked.
Delving into the historical unknowns to grapple with this reality, Richter’s twentieth-century book argues for a physical repositioning of how people examine North American history away from Eurocentrism. Telling an “eastward-facing” (Richter, 9) narrative by looking through Indigenous people’s eyes disproves false exceptionalism ideas while uncovering truthful yet overlooked Indigenous stories like that of Cahokia.
Specifically, sustaining this historic urban center “home to more than twenty thousand people” (Richter, 3) required economic, political, and social ingenuity from generations of Native Americans, combatting inaccurate white supremacist narratives that Indigenous people were incapable of urbanization.
Ultimately, while it is important to appreciate how Richter pioneered this “facing east” discourse in Indigenous studies, the sugar-coating of colonial violence, especially when talking about Mississippian societies’ decline starting from colonial arrival, serves as a limitation.
In her 2014 book, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz builds off Richter’s weakness by blatantly highlighting America’s violent settler colonialist past, refuting internalized exceptionalist thinking today. While Richter’s focus on specific Indigenous stories may allow for a non-Eurocentric telling of history, it fails to acknowledge America’s violent colonialism, creating an incomplete version of the past.
Using an accusatory tone, which the year she wrote this book allowed for, Dunbar-Ortiz emphasizes how “US history…cannot be understood without dealing with the genocide that the United States committed against Indigenous peoples” (9). Exceptionalism has shielded previous scholars from using controversial words such as “settler colonialism” and “genocide” to talk about America’s history.
However, the fact that Dunbar-Ortiz is revolutionarily using this language to deal with US-Indigenous relations does not detract from its accuracy. Instead, applying a settler colonialist lens to US history uncovers America’s years of violent expansionism, massacres, and more oppressive policies that prove its genocidal tendencies.
Unfortunately, “manifest destiny” mentalities are not a thing of the past. For instance, implying that colonists encountered unoccupied, “free” land and erasing Indigenous peoples’ experiences, “This Land is Your Land” perpetuates a colonialist mindset through a seemingly harmless anthem taught to most public school students (Dunbar-Ortiz, 2–3). Ultimately, using a settler colonialist framework to unearth America’s uncomfortable truths is the only way to address and refute these ingrained colonial mindsets today.
Although some scholars focus on accessibility, many acknowledge that using accurate language in Indigenous studies helps tell a truthful and respectful Native American history. Beyond accurately using “the United States” instead of “America,” Dunbar-Ortiz calls Indigenous nations by their preferred names, highlighting her goal of authentically empowering Indigenous voices through her book.
Marge Bruchac, in the introduction of Savage Kin, expands on Dunbar-Ortiz’s discussion on diction by not only acknowledging the difficulty in simplifying complex Indigenous identities but also the historical oppressiveness of language: “Western colonizers constructed ‘institutions, vocabulary, scholarship, imagery, doctrines and even colonial bureaucracies and colonial styles’ to control not just the lives but also the images of the colonized subjects” (1).
Using authentic diction helps combat continuations of these harmful colonial institutions and vocabulary today. Even though Dunbar-Ortiz and Bruchac acknowledge this reality, other scholars prioritize making their literature convenient for all readers. Specifically, in The Indian World of George Washington, Colin Calloway uses “Indians” to refer to Indigenous people while calling Native communities and individuals by their whitewashed names.
Although he is writing about a time when language like this was normal, Calloway fails to acknowledge the historical trauma and stereotypes associated with his language use, as Bruchac does. When modern scholarship’s goal should be to refute colonial mindsets today, like mindful language use tries to do, Calloway’s diction for a 2018 book seems to do the opposite.
Reframing the way people think about Indigenous history can inform how they address current-day Indigenous issues. As Eshaan Kothari addresses in his land acknowledgment, using Dunbar-Ortiz’s settler colonialist framework helps shed light on how “modern capitalism contributes to Indigenous oppression, as large companies continue to seize and exploit Native American resources and land” (Kothari, 1).
Admitting this reality of contemporary colonialism is the only way to go beyond a land acknowledgment to ensure tangible change for Indigenous communities. Moreover, using the “facing east” framework, Martin Reinhardt examined pre-colonial Indigenous eating habits through his “Decolonizing Diets Project,” which helped to combat obesity and heart disease among Native Americans (Maples, 40:35–41:43).
Expanding on Reinhardt’s research on the physical effects of decolonization, it is important to also explore the emotional impact of colonialism on Indigenous communities. Future research needs to address how intergenerational trauma and mental health issues persist among Indigenous communities and the ways decolonization can play a role in the healing process.
