Indigenous Archival Activism: Mohican Interventions in Public History and Memory

by Rose Miron

Who has the right to represent Native history?  The past several decades have seen a massive shift in debates over who owns and has the right to tell Native American history and stories. For centuries, non-Native actors have collected, stolen, sequestered, and gained value from Native stories and documents, human remains, and sacred objects. However, thanks to the work of Native activists, Native history is now increasingly being repatriated back to the control of tribes and communities. Indigenous Archival Activism takes readers into the heart of these debates by tracing one tribe's fifty-year fight to recover and rewrite their history.   Rose Miron tells the story of the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican Nation and their Historical Committee, a group of mostly Mohican women who have been collecting and reorganizing historical materials since 1968. She shows how their work is exemplary of how tribal archives can be used strategically to shift how Native history is accessed, represented, written and, most importantly, controlled. Based on a more than decade-long reciprocal relationship with the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican Nation, Miron's research and writing is shaped primarily by materials found in the tribal archive and ongoing conversations and input from the Stockbridge-Munsee Historical Committee.   As a non-Mohican, Miron is careful to consider her own positionality and reflects on what it means for non-Native researchers and institutions to build reciprocal relationships with Indigenous nations in the context of academia and public history, offering a model both for tribes undertaking their own reclamation projects and for scholars looking to work with tribes in ethical ways.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Indigenous, American History

304 pages, Hardcover

First published April 16, 2024

Reviews

[Alison Miron · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderful example of the “working with, not for” concept Freire encourages. It’s a critical reminder of just how entangled settler colonialism is in our culture but that we can actively choose to disrupt it. And, of course, we are all better when native people control their own histories. I’m beaming with pride for my sister.

[Jaclyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

My heart is bursting with pride for my sister. Rose’s work is a brilliant exploration of the power of archives, history, and representation. Rose beautifully connects Native and non-Native readers alike - and her dedication and hard work shine through in every page. I couldn’t be prouder of her for creating something so impactful.

[Andrew Souers · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m completely biased, but I found this work absolutely compelling from first draft to finished product. The lengths Miron goes to narrate the stories of the Mohican people and her cognizance as a non-native person is evident.

Im incredibly proud to see this project come to fruition as an important act of resistance to settler colonial norms and remind us all who is best suited to represent native history - native voices.

[Margot Note]

"I argue that the creation and strategic use of tribal archives constitute an important type of Indigenous political action and nation-building that fundamentally shifts how Native history is accessed, represented, taught, and written. I collectively call these activities 'Indigenous archival activism.' Indigenous archival activism is anchored around three elements: access, sovereignty, and new narratives. It encompasses the actions Indigenous nations take to make their histories and historical materials more accessible to tribal members; to exercise sovereignty over the retrieval, organization, and description of their records and knowledge while using these materials to define Indigenous nationhood; and to contest existing, and create new, narratives of Native history. Put simply, it is the act of mobilizing archives to change Indigenous narratives and representations" 92-3).

"As the Historical Committee began its work, they were both re-membering, directly responding to the dismemberment inherent in settle colonialism by returning to Mohican homelands and gathering stories and records that were scattered through colonization, and remembering, making sense o those records to craft new historical narratives that would both cultivate a shared sense of Mohican nationhood and challenge the widespread erasure of Mohican survival" (19).

"While for non-Indigenous researchers like me, this process is merely difficult and mundane, for Indigenous researchers this process can be retraumatizing. Finding these records and expediting the research process often requires operating in a colonialist mind-set, whereby Indigenous researchers must imagine how and why their ancestors would have been surveilled or recorded in colonial records. Conducting this type of research requires not only reviewing thousands of irrelevant materials to find a few relevant ones but also reckoning with how one's ancestors were racialized, removed, and murdered in the interest of advancing white society and confronting what are at times horrific pasts" (49).

"As Timothy Powell argues in his work about digital stories, recordings not only preserve details that are often erased from written documentation but also more effectively represent Indigenous practices of oral history and storytelling that have been ongoing since time immemorial. Digital recordings 'animate qualities of traditional knowledge' in a way that print culture simply cannot" (75).

"In my work at the Newberry, one of the questions I consistently ask myself is, Am I contributing to colonial harm, or am I working to undo it? This work is not easy or straightforward, and we will all make mistakes. I certainly have. But our responsibility as those who work in these institutions with colonial pasts is to work to undo some of that harm every day. We might not complete the work; in fact, it will probably continue long after most of us cease working and living. What matters is that we make progress every day and that we continue to listen and be led by the priorities of the Indigenous people whose materials are held in these archival collections" (214).

[Sierra Rosetta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing, one of the next most influential NAIS books of our time.