Indigenous Peoples Day

Once, years ago, we had a Nez Perce history discussion going on at the Josephy Center. Bobbie Conner, then and now director of Tamastslikt on the Umatilla Reservation, came in the door on another task. I greeted her from the balcony discussion group and announced that we were talking about Nez Perce Treaties. Bobbie walked up the stairs and told us that if we were talking about treaties we’d better start with the Doctrine of Discovery, and learn how it crept into American Indian Law.Read Rich’s Post →

The Legacy of Jefferson

In the July-August 2024 issue of the Smithsonian magazine, in an article on “Mapping the Mississippi,” Boyce Uphold writes of Thomas Jefferson:

“Jefferson had formed a vision for new territory west of the Appalachian Mountains. It would fuel the creation of an ‘empire for liberty.’…

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Ned Blackhawk: a New History of America

I’m only 107 pages into Ned Blackhawks new book, The Rediscovery of America, and am already taken with an entirely new approach to American history. I’ve read Jill Lepore’s These Truths, and found it fact-filled, well written, and engaging, but, in the end, I found it limited, a kind of “Jeffersonian history.” In large part, Lepore takes the opening words of the Declaration, “We the people,” and sees the march of American history as the gradual expansion of “we.” It starts with male property owners, then embraces all (white) males, and gradually adds freed slaves, women, and, finally, in 1924, American Indians.Read Rich’s Post →

The Sioux Nation, South Dakota, and Five Presidents

Amidst coronavirus and Black Lives Matter, President Trump has done what the news media and the public couldn’t seem to get to—bring attention to American Indians. Concocting something with the Republican governor of South Dakota, Trump is engineered a Fourth of July celebration at Mount Rushmore, site of the mountain carvings of presidents Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt. There’s been a ten-year lapse since the last such celebration due to forest fire danger—but not this year.Read Rich’s Post →