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: History, Nonfiction, 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.

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Indigenous Archival Activism by Rose Miron chronicles the efforts of the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican Nation Historical Committee to develop a centralized Mohican tribal archive aimed at reclaiming, reconstructing, and preserving Indigenous identity and culture. Dr. Rose Miron comes to this project as the previous Director of the D’arcy McNickle Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies at the Newberry Library; she is now Vice President of Research and Education at Northwestern University. She is a historian and archival scholar whose work focuses on Indigenous archives, community-based historical practice, and the ethical responsibilities of non-Indigenous researchers working with Native communities. This book is perhaps her most notable work to date, but she has a new multi-media public history project called Indigenous Chicago, which she is currently working on, as well as previous works researching Native boarding schools and artifact repatriation in and around the Great Lakes.

Indigenous Archival Activism follows a group of people descended from ancient “rememberers,” individuals whose role within the tribe was to document history, maintain records, and preserve knowledge to pass down through generations and later for use in dealings with the United States government. Over time, this information transitioned from a purely oral tradition to written documentation, and in the modern era, these collections have become increasingly important as community members look back to their cultural history for answers. After a devastating fire in the 1960s threatened to erase much of Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican history, it became clear that preservation could no longer rest with a few individuals. This realization led to the creation of the Historical Committee, spreading responsibility across the community to stabilize, organize, and protect their archival collections. The archive also became a tool for fostering cultural engagement and analysis within the tribe itself. Miron’s position as a non-Indigenous, non-tribally affiliated historian adds an important layer to the work, as Indigenous Archival Activism also serves as a blueprint for historians navigating questions of representation, authority, and ethics. The book demonstrates how scholars can work within established protocols, especially guarded ones such as tribal communities, to amplify Indigenous voices and histories rather than exploit them. Many sources were used to finish this book: “Using archival sources such as meeting notes, newspaper articles, and correspondence, the book traces the multidimensional work of the historical committee from 1968 to the early twenty 2020s.” (Miron, 3)

Cultural exploitation was unfortunately very commonplace in the past, as colonial settlers controlled the narrative of the tribe as they forcibly moved them from their ancestral lands in New York numerous times, eventually stopping in Wisconsin. Religion was erased, languages were erased, and as with many indigenous peoples throughout the world, Christianity was imposed on everyone in the place of their real culture. It is for this reason that a lot of what we know of these tribes, often simply known as “Mohicans,” comes from documents from colonial settlers discussing the tribe without taking the time to understand their culture. This created gaps or outright silences in the historical record, often filled in by pop culture products of varying veracity, including James Fenimore Cooper’s novel The Last of the Mohicans and its subsequent 1936 and 1992 film adaptations. The Last of the Mohicans was especially damaging as, as the title would imply, it built a false narrative that the Mohicans were somehow extinct, so asking for records or trying to repatriate artifacts proved difficult at times.

This book opens with a fairly lengthy introduction focused on defining what “Indigenous archival activism” actually means, followed by a discussion of the three pillars the author identifies: access, sovereignty, and new narratives. The book states that the term “archival activism” is frequently associated with a political agenda towards social transformation and challenging discrimination, in terms of the indigenous populations, the term can be used to signify a grassroots movement to establish and develop tribal archives, return and secure tribal history and rights during the restoration era (Milon, 3)

The first of the three pillars is access. Access is presented as operating in two directions. On one hand, Miron discusses the Historical Committee’s early efforts to locate Mohican materials that had been scattered across the country due to theft, private collecting, or removal to distant museums. Committee members often went to great lengths just to view or photocopy materials, sometimes traveling from Oklahoma to Wisconsin. Many of these collections were poorly cataloged, forcing members to sift through countless unrelated items on the chance that something relevant might surface.

Access also works in the opposite direction, as the Committee came to realize they needed to avoid replicating the same barriers they had encountered. This meant properly identifying and cataloging materials, as well as making records available online so future researchers and community members would not have to undertake similar cross-country searches to access their own history.
The next pillar is sovereignty, which describes the need to have control over one’s culture and history, letting go of any colonial control over it to aid in nation-building. It would be easy to just collect the sources previously recorded without any new insight, but the same conclusions and potential falsehoods would likely resurface. A need to reconceptualize and give due context to known sources, or to look for previously unknown silences, would be a necessity. Milon discusses the fact that many settler accounts treat the native population like unimportant objects with no history, law, or culture, despite many sources recording those same three things almost immediately afterwards. Natives were often voiceless within these narratives, seen as savages and glossed over. By not only controlling how this information is seen, but also who has access to this information in general, the tribal leaders establish an important part of national sovereignty and security.

The final of the three pillars is new knowledge, which is produced from these materials in the manner outlined above. From almost the very beginning, the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohicans made the creation of such materials as oral histories, language courses, and cultural programming available to the Mohican community to help rebuild their culture. Since many ancestors were rendered voiceless, as mentioned before, modern tribespeople were interviewed so that future generations would know what game before, continuing the mission of the ancient rememberer.
Personally, a highlight of the book that I enjoyed reading about the most was the obscene lengths that early committee members went to in order to collect their history. Recycling cans for gas money, working tirelessly, hunched over a microfiche machine, scouring newspapers, doing everything without a monetary backing a lot of times (although they did secure grants at times) shows the dedication to the cause they had, and it is an inspiration to read about it. If I can be half as determined and driven as they were in my own personal historical pursuits, it will be very worth it.

Rose Miron did everything in her power to establish a good working relationship with the tribal leadership while making this book. She came to this project as an undergraduate after watching a video series documenting the false notion that the Mohicans were already all gone. This sparked an interest in her in the tribal history of the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican Nation, and she was eventually invited to functions such as Committee meetings. She asked the tribe for permission to work on the committee’s history for her doctoral thesis, and worked closely with them to come at the project from a respectful vantagepoint. Dr. Miron admirably did everything in a way that all historians should strive for when working within cultures not their own. This book showcases what can happen when you do things right, and members of the community wrote a foreword to the book in appreciation for everything she did.

Indigenous Archival Activism: Mohican Interventions in Public History and Memory, by Rose Miron is not only an interesting look at the work of historians excelling at their field even under the most troubling of circumstances, but a roadmap that every researcher should try to follow, especially when working with cultures that are not one’s own. The amount of mutual respect between the author and the tribe was great to see, especially when being a white historian looking at indigenous history often has a checkered past full of broken promises and exploitation. This is a book I will keep in my library, as many lessons can be learned about what can be done in the field if done the right way.

[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.