by Bailey Walker ‘24.5
Preface
I am a cisgender white male from an affluent and educated background and I recognize the many ways in which I benefit from a society that is structured towards the harm of minority communities. I do not represent or speak for the Indigenous community.
The history of a people and how it is told, is a defining feature of their identity. This is not a telling of the history of the Abenaki people, rather an emphasis of the importance of listening to their history. From communal creation stories to the personal stories of a relative, our understanding of the past and our place within it creates the foundations for community and sense of self. Tragically, because of this deep connection to identity, the erasure of Native history has historically been used by Anglo colonists as a device to attempt the erasure of Indigenous presence from the mainstream record. Despite decades of attempts and being written out of mainstream history telling, Native and Abenaki history has remained strong. This history has been shared in many different ways throughout time, from oral tradition to academic publishing. For many Indigenous historians the academic realm lends itself to a wider audience through its mainstream acceptance while others choose to tell their people’s stories through artistic means, in keeping with more traditional means of history-telling. To properly decolonize and form a fuller account of the past, allowing Native and Abenaki community members to tell their own history is imperative and a means to strengthen Indigenous presence.
The act of history-telling, whether by academic or artistic means, serves to decolonize in many different and effective ways. Native and Abenaki histories engage with and serve to decolonize Indigenous thought and presence. The ways in which these Indigenous projects work to decolonize are outlined by Linda Tuhiwai Smith in her “Twenty-five Indigenous Projects”1 within Decolonizing Methodologies. Many artists and historytellers engage in Testimony, Storytelling, Celebrating survival, Reframing, Writing and theory making, and Sharing, to name a few (Tuhiwai Smith). These methodologies serve as a framework to understand the ways in which Indigenous and Abenaki historians and artists engage with their own history and the effects Native history-telling has towards the goal of decolonization and representation.
1 When referencing one of Tuhiwai Smith’s methodologies, the methodology title will be in italics.
One of the most prominent examples of a decolonized account of Native history on Turtle Island, or North America, in an academic context is scholar Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States. Though her intensive research and retelling of American and colonial history from the Indigenous perspective, Dunbar-Ortiz chronicles the formation of colonial genocide against Native peoples and its reciprocal through lines within American and Indigenous history. In the chapter “Bloody Footprints,” Dunbar-Ortiz reexamines the beginnings of direct Anglo war with Native tribes before and during the French-Indian wars (Dunbar-Ortiz). The way we explain and understand the period from first contact between settlers and Natives to the creation of the United States, becomes the foundation for American history, reinforced by the heroic depictions of settlers throughout the US education system. By forcing the reader to acknowledge the roots and examples of “extreme violence against civilians… to seek the utter annihilation of the Indigenous population,” Dunbar-Ortiz effectively Reframes the traditional narrative of early U.S. history (Dunbar-Ortiz 59). Through her act of Remembering “the core dynamic of U.S. ‘democracy,’” Dunbar-Ortiz gives credibility and voice to the truth lived and passed down by Native peoples (Dunbar-Ortiz 71). The work of Dunbar-Ortiz is invaluable on a national level, aiding to better understand and decolonize the history of the U.S. a nation.
In terms of Abenaki academic historiography, the work of Dr. Fredrick Wiseman, member of the Missisquoi Abenaki, has provided strong and irrefutable evidence of the tribe’s continued existence and focused on expanding knowledge about the actions taken by the Abenaki in their own history. In his history of the European discovery of Lake Champlain, At Lake Between: The Great Council Fire, Wiseman looks “at this event anew” from the principle that “the indigenous histories and perspectives of non-Iroquoian peoples of the Northeast deserve as much attention [as the European perspective] by historians and anthropologists” (Wiseman At Lake 3). His account of this history blends photos and research gathered from both indigenous and European sources in a chronological telling, to provide a fuller account of Samuel de Champlain’s voyage effectively proving that “much that was hidden may be revealed,” (Wiseman At Lake 3). In his own words, Wiseman “combined a polyglot blend of paleoclimate, geography, Native culture and traditional technology, with a distinctive Native view: an advocacy for the Great Council Fire,” (Wiseman At Lake 74). This persuasive Writing and Reframing of a fundamental moment in the history of the Abenaki and other Northeast Native tribes, is accessible to both Indigenous and non-Indigenous readers and puts Native people in their own history as complex actors not solely victims or villains.
As noted by Tuhiwai Smith, the telling of Indigenous history is not always academic. The strong oral traditions of Indigenous cultures translate well to using methods for history-telling other than published papers. Indigenous storytellers and theater-makers like the Spiderwoman Theatre company and playwright Randy Reinholz use the stage to Reframe, Share, and Represent Native history in a more powerful and natural way. Spiderwoman’s Material Witness is an expression through “storyweaving.” Birthed from Native storytelling practices and the catharsis that comes from Testimony, the play weaves together the real stories of Indigenous women who have experienced violence (Miguel). While often difficult and even discomfortable for the viewer, the experience generates a strong awareness and empathy of the epidemic of violence faced by Native women in Canada and U.S. Randy Reinholz’s play Off the Rails uses theatre to educate and display the history of Indian boarding schools in the U.S. and Canada. Through the use of photos throughout the show and the experiences of the characters themselves, Reinholz depicts the atrocities of these often forgotten boarding schools (Reinholz). Artistic methods have the unique ability to both educate and connect on a deeper level with the audience than most academic writing can. Through theater and other artistic means, Native storytellers and artists effectively change the perceptions of the viewer and decolonize U.S. history with creations based in their lived experiences.
Master Abenaki storyteller Dr. Joseph Bruchac combines traditional storytelling methods with historical facts in his novel The Winter People. Bruchac tells the story of Saxo, a fictional Abenaki teenager in 1759, who embarks on a journey to save his family from the brutal Roger’s Rangers who have taken them hostage after destroying his village of St. Francis. While Saxo and the story itself is fictional, many of the historical events and even some of the characters are truthful. Through this retelling Bruchac focuses on the “untold or misinterpreted events of history” because “things are so often only heard from one side,” (Bruchac 163). The book itself resembles a more traditional Indigenous way of telling stories tied to history, through narrative with characters meant to relate to the reader and take them on a journey, instead of solely through a timeline.
Indigenous and Abenaki history deserves to be told with the inclusion of those who it effects most: Native peoples themselves. Most of the time, this means history told from a Native perspective or with a strong relationship with Native knowledge from an accredited source. The truthful history of oppressed and silenced groups is often difficult to find within the history of the dominant culture. Much of Abenaki presence during the mid-twentieth century was hidden in order to avoid the harm caused by a state funded eugenics program, but like the Abenaki themselves, their stories and history remain (Wiseman, Against). It is through these stories and histories, collections of artifacts and oral traditions, that community identity and a stronger outside understanding stem. In decolonizing our history to include the Native perspective and truth, we not only strengthen the sense of identity among indigenous communities, but the knowledge of our own U.S. past and how it can explain our present.
Works Cited
Bruchac, Joseph. The Winter People. Puffin Books, 2004.
Dunbar-Ortiz, Roxanne. An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States. Beacon Press, 2015.
Miguel, Muriel. Material Witness. 2016.
Reinholz, Randy. Off the Rails. 2017.
Tuhiwai Smith, Linda. “Twenty-Five Indigenous Projects.” Decolonizing Methodologies, Second, Zed Books Ltd., 2012, pp. 143–64.
Wiseman, Frederick Matthew. Against the Darkness: The American Abenaki Experience. 2006.
—. At Lake Between: The Great Council Fire and the European Discovery of Lake Champlain. Lake Champlain Maritime Museum, 2009.