Hello and thank you very much for being a part of this conference! Yours was a fascinating panel. I was wondering, what does intercultural exchange with with other native groups look like for your communities in this day and age?

This question probably applies to a few of you, so for whoever's got what to say-

What kinds of efforts are being made in the indigenous groups that you are part of/discuss in your presentation to perpetuate the native language, particularly in younger generations? Do these efforts tend to be successful? What are your opinions on what can/should be done to keep this going?

A question for /u/thatlastmoment: I wondered if you could say a little more about the ways in which the historical memory of Malinche is gendered? It struck me as interesting that at once we have a woman who is associated with motherhood yet also widely despised, her voice absent from the sources yet also in some ways ascribed a huge amount of agency - a traitor, after all, makes their own decision to 'betray', a decision which in the popular narrative at least had significant consequences.

I have a question! Well, more of a comment really. Thank you so much, all of you, for a panel which absolutely blew my mind! It was an absolute joy and privilege to be behind the camera on this, as it sparked so many thoughts for me, really giving me a new perspective on the issues that you all raise. One I'd especially like to thank you all for, and especially Ali, was just flipping the very concept of indigeneity, as it struck a chord with your opening about how West Asia isn't a place we think of with "indigenous", and make me look at how my idea of "indigenous" is still framed for me, even if unconsciously.

I could have quite a few questions, really, but one in particular I wanted to press on was what Wayne brought up with his discussion about the framing of "the White River massacre". I thought it was an absolutely stellar point in looking at how terminology shapes our understanding of events, and how an event can be portrayed so different simply by the use of either positive or negative words. What immediately came to mind there was the Massacre at Wounded Knee, which of course in white history books was called a "Battle" for quite a long time

Despite my joke at the beginning, I promise this is a question though, even if an open-ended one! What I wanted to get more insight into here, from all of the panelists, is how they see this use of language manifesting itself in their own studies. Especially given the focus on the different between official, colonialist histories and indigenous ways of doing history, this use of terminology to cast actions in such wildly different lights and create narratives fascinates me, and I'd love to better understand how these things, which when looked at uncritically can seem to innocuous, shape the history that you are telling, and the 'history' that you are fighting back against.

Thank you to all of you for such an interesting panel, I really enjoyed the discussion!

For someone who grew up and was educated in the Western way of thinking about colonialism and indigeneity, what books or resources from an alternate viewpoint would you recommend?

This was an incredible watch, thank you very much to the panelist. Very powerful stuff.

I'm very curious, what are some good methods to help make sure more perspectives (especially Indigenous ones) are more widely taught and shared?

I know the panel touches on the ability to leverage the modern digital community, and I'd love to hear more about how thats getting used to share or strengthen perspectives. Are there particularly effective ways? Methods you'd like to see used more, or perhaps differently?

Great panel- I have a question based on I had a professor say to explain how impactful settler colonialism was, and I wonder what any (or all) of your thoughts are-

Settler colonialism devastated so many aspects of Indigenous people's lives that you could say Indigenous people live in a post-apocalyptic world.

Thinking about Jean Dennison's book Colonial Entanglement and her argument that Indigenous identity and colonization are so entangled that they're inseparable, it seems fair to say that settler colonialism is that catastrophic.

What do you think?

Thank you all for your stories, and a fascinating panel! I admit this was among the panels I have been looking forward to the most.

Since the word came up in several of your papers, I wanted to ask if anyone could elaborate on the concept of "rupture" as it is used in indigenous history? To my Western-centric understanding, ruptures are breaks in historiography, in particular during political revolutions, but I wonder if this understanding might be inadequate within these perspectives?

Thank you all for sharing your perspective. I really hope this doesn't come across as offensive, but I had to ask. Here in Canada there's a strong movement to stop using terms like Indian and instead use primarily Native American or Indigenous. Is the situation different in the states? I heard Indian used a few times in the video and it honestly really threw me.

To broaden it, are there similar movements elsewhere to 'reclaim' or use more traditional names and titles?

Thanks to everyone involved! 

For now a more general one: Concepts like Indigenous and Indigeneity have very problematic roots - from the Spanish using indio as a catch all term in colonial times, to e.g. indigenismo in modern Latin America.
  For your work or in your own identification, how do you deal with the colonial roots of these concepts? Or in other words, how can those overarching concepts help us when studying the histories of groups with often much more local identifications?

I'm very glad this panel kicked off the conference! Haven't watched it yet as I'm just waking up out here in my time zone but will soon. My question is for /u/BaharnaHistory . I also do settler colonial and Indigenous histories in the MENA, but specifically Palestine-Israel. Indigeneity was not really a concept being used to talk about Palestinians until the past few years (settler colonialism was in the 60s, and then faded away, and then came back strong recently), although of course concepts like who is "native" to the land has always been part of the narratives under contestation. I also study Jewish claims to indigeneity. Personally the more I get into it the more I find that while important frameworks, there are limits to understanding indigeneity in the MENA and the Arab world, at least as typically conceptualized through say Native American and Indigenous studies texts from primarily North American or even Oceanic scholars. Have you run into issues around what it means to be indigenous in the MENA like this? Would you say how the Baharna understand themselves as indigenous fits with or has friction with other concepts of indigeneity? Any just general reflections on the ride of Indigeneity as a concept to help us understand MENA histories? (Maybe you cover this in your talk, I am looking forward to it.)

For both /u/BaharnaHistory and u/thatlastmoment: both of your papers and answers here touched on the reality that Indigenous experiences are bound up not just in settler colonialism, but also relationships with other non-Western (even indigenous) peoples. Does this complicate contemporary efforts to build solidarity between Indigenous peoples, and with other groups?

Here’s a question for any of the panelists. Imagine you were asked to develop a United States history curriculum for high school students. You have to cover all the “greatest hits” of American history (1776, the civil war) but you have a free hand to include indigenous history content as you think fit.

What are the most important points you would want to make? What would be your top priorities to include? What do you think it’s most important for students to know about indigenous Americans. (Remembering that a teacher would still have to spend much of their time on Gettysburg and MLK etc., so you have to prioritize)

I think its reasonable to say that all of these perspectives must experience a fair amount of push back, especially from various factions against revising history against the traditional narrative. How do you deal with something like that? Are there attempts to convert naysayers and reeducate them? How can you continue to share your history in the face of attempts to silence it?

This panel provides such great insights, not only into the specific topics of your papers (though they all rocked!), but also more broadly into the value of Indigenous Histories as a more accurate and thoughtful approach to understanding the past -- and the present. Thanks to each of you, and to the group overall, for your thoughtful work.

Wayne and Kyle's discussions of the disruption of Northwest lands were especially resonant to me, as someone who lives and works on unceded lands of the Multnomah, Wasco, Kathlamet, Clackamas, Cowlitz bands of Chinook, Tualatin Kalapuya, Molalla and other tribes who made their homes along the Columbia and Willamette Rivers. Here in Portland, many whites want to count ourselves as politically progressive. Oh, and we love to eat salmon -- albeit without much of the understanding of what salmon mean culturally and historically to those who occupied this land first. I wonder how the discussion during this panel of salmon, for example, could shape things like the politics of a trip to the local store to purchase fish for tonight's dinner.

How can we bring a deeper understanding of Indigenous history and twenty-first-century Indigenous perspectives into the choices we make as consumers as well as residents of unceded Tribal/Indigenous land?

This is tangents on indigenous history somewhat, but speaks to the "from time immemorial" bit, when I was at university studying there was a pretty clear strain (in this case regarding swedish history) to push back against the traditional historical narratives of national history: of the idea of a single "people" (traditionally often racialized, but slightly less so) whose "history" can be easily delineated, studied, contrasted with other national histories, etc. In favour of emphasizing the contingent, and... Ephemeral is probably the wrong word, but temporally bound nature of ideas of nation, state, and other forms of identity, to point out that a swedish person in then 19th, 17th, 14th or 10th century (insofar as they even considered themselves "swedish") would have radically different ideas about what that means, who they were, who other people were, etc. And that these national and other group-narratives says more about our current society and what we consider important than what historical groups considered important. A lot of indigenous historians instead seem to often centre the continuity (while acknowledging ruptures, etc.) of native communities (which of course, in a certain way is also true) in a way that (to me ) often feels uncomfortably similar to 19th century histories and their own concerns about being the "native" people, etc. While obviously the political-instrumental reasons for doing so (both in terms of reinforcing community bounds and for basically trying to create legitimacy in negotiations with the colonial or other powers and as a counter-argument to equally ahistorical attempts to erase native history)

Basically to what extend are these processes of identity-formation and shaping-of-memory concerns to you? Is it simply a matter of it not being particularly important in the context of more important political struggles? Is it just a matter of me not quite interpreting the english language correctly? (I remember one professor discussing, in terms of in this case a bronze age grave, how even terms like "our ancestors" in some sense is an anachronistic term: At the time these people were not "ours", they were "theirs", and they obviously could know even less of us than we could of them)

Thank you so much for doing this. Your timing couldn't be better for me personally -- I just began an evaluation of some state social studies standards and district curriculum relating to colonial New England with regards to representation of Indigenous peoples, and it has been eye opening. I am just beginning to digest the content here so I don't have any questions but I definitely will. Really looking forward to the Q&A and reading the papers, especially Inherent Sovereignty -- but all the papers look fascinating and helpful.

Good morning and welcome to the "Indigenous Histories Disrupting Yours: Sovereignties, History, and Power" conference panel Q&A! This panel examines the role that historians play in empowering Indigenous communities by countering the historical and continuing erasure of Indigenous voices from within the historical narrative.

Moderated by Elle Ransom (/u/anthropology_nerd), "Indigenous Histories Disrupting Yours" draws together perspectives from the Americas and from the Middle East.

It features:

Ali Al-Jamri (/u/BaharnaHistory), presenting his paper, "Countering Cultural Erasure Through Community History: The Case of the Baharna".

This paper discusses the erasure of Baharna history and the digital community efforts in response to it. It provides an overview of the Baharna, their history, and how local historians and community enthusiasts are working to combat erasure.

The Baharna are the indigenous Arabs of the Bahrain islands and surrounding Arabian coastline. They are ‘settled Arabs’ whose ties to the land stretch back centuries, who in the modern era were subjected to serfdom and dispossession. This historic disruption coincided with British colonialism and is still felt powerfully today. The Baharna’s history is subjected to erasure; young Baharna are switching away from their parents’ dialects.

In response, members of the Baharna community are organising digitally. This paper is instructive of efforts to democratise and decolonise history and presents the Baharna community's activities as a case study.

Wayne Buchanan (/u/salishdub), presenting his paper, "Rupture and Resilience: The Muckleshoot People".

The now Muckleshoot Indian Tribe of Washington State has experienced a ruptured event of unrivaled proportions since the arrival of the first settlers in the territory. Pre-Colonization of Washington Territory, the Tribe relied on kinship wealth, potlatches, traditional knowledge, and salmon for their subsistence. Each of these elements were the foundation of the political governing system. The arrival of settlers ruptured this system by disavowing prominent headmen within the Tribe; declaring open season to any Indian or Indian sympathizer; committing massacres on women, young, and elderly; and limited Tribal sovereignty through reservations. Additional elements rupturing the daily function of Muckleshoot include the Fish Wars, a further attempt to limit the Tribe’s self-determination. Each of these actions have drastically changed the way the Tribe functions today.

Today, the Tribal community continues to experience the ramifications of this colonial rupture. Though the Tribe is strong, they continue to face further attacks to limit Tribal sovereignty. To protect this sovereignty, we must recognize that the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe has been here since time immemorial. This paper explores how the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe has persevered throughout this catastrophe and continues to strengthen themselves and empower all of Indian country.

Kyle Pittman (/u/snapshot52), presenting his paper, "Inherent Sovereignty: Disruptions to Indigenous Nationhood".

Indigenous communities of the Americas have experienced constant and dynamic changes since the arrival of Europeans, an event that ruptured longstanding institutions and societal norms. Prior to colonization, the Native Nations of North America operated with many of the same characteristics of functioning civilizations that we can identify today: we maintained formal ties between polities; we exercised territorial control over geographic regions; and we developed our own systems of government to meet the needs of our peoples. Each of these activities is an expression of sovereignty, a necessary indicator of self-determination.

Colonization, however, drastically changed the political landscape in which we could express said sovereignty. Today our communities continue to experience the ramifications of this historical uproar. Though many Native Nations have survived to our current day, we are constantly beset with challenges to the inherent sovereignty we have maintained over the centuries. To preserve and expand this sovereignty, we must first recognize that Native Nations have possessed this quality before settlers arrived to the Americas. This paper explores the ways in which Native Nations have historically expressed our sovereignty and articulates the basis for our continued expression of sovereignty today.

​Miguel Rivas Fernandez (/u/thatlastmoment), presenting his paper, "Remembering Malinche: The Evolving Role of Language in the Events and Memory of the Early Spanish Conquest".

The early conquest of the Americas represents a massive change in world history, uniting two worlds previously separated. The role of language is central to understanding these events, and understanding how language has been used to record them is essential to comprehend the modern portrayals of the conquest. This paper looks at the role of language in the events themselves as well as in the historical record by focusing on the role of Doña Marina (La Malinche), who was the interpreter to conquistador Hernán Cortés, as well as the conversation between Cortés and Aztec ruler Moctezuma and the accounts of the events by both Spaniards and Native Americans.

Using contemporary sources, accounts written in subsequent decades, as well as modern interpretations of the events, the paper explores the key role that language played in the conquest, as well as how the use of language has changed the way we remember the events in historical memory, particularly the homogenization of Natives, the apparent surrender of Moctezuma, and the evolution in the image of Doña Marina from mother of mestizos to most despised woman in Mexican history.

Ask us anything!

Find more of today's conference content here.

Learn more about the AskHistorians 2020 Digital Conference here.