Considering the Present in Writing about the Indigenous Past

Abstract

Considering the Present in Writing about the Indigenous Past Elizabeth N. Ellis (bio) IN the spring of 2018 the William and Mary Quarterly published a Forum titled "Materials and Methods in Native American and Indigenous Studies." One year later, the journal published another Forum addressing the rise of the term settler colonialism in early American history.1 These essays marked a watershed moment in the field and are indicative of some of the theoretical and methodological shifts required for exploring Vast Early America. Taken together, these publications signal a growing acceptance of Indigenous studies approaches in early American studies scholarship. The Great Power of Small Nations builds on this turn, and I am deeply grateful to the WMQ and my colleagues for the opportunity to discuss my book within the larger Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS) and early American historiographies, particularly because NAIS methods are far from broadly accepted by historians. In part, this is because NAIS demands that scholars engage with the communities that we study and consider the consequences of our work for modern tribal nations. So, as Emilie Connolly highlights in her opening comments, the field as a whole continues to wrestle with questions about whether and how to integrate NAIS approaches and theory into historical scholarship.2 When I finished writing The Great Power of Small Nations, I could not have foreseen that the book's publication would coincide with the [End Page 761] revival of long-standing, contentious debates over the perils of presentism in historical scholarship. In August 2022, the then-president of the American Historical Association, James H. Sweet, published a piece in Perspectives on History lamenting the prevalence of presentism and the infusion of "identity politics" into historical work. "This new history often ignores the values and mores of people in their own times, as well as change over time, neutralizing the expertise that separates historians from those in other disciplines," he wrote. Many scholars have echoed that perspective to express their concerns about the rise of scholarship written by historians who foreground their own experiences or engage explicitly with the present. Other historians have pushed back forcefully against these criticisms of intersectional work.3 As Jessica Marie Johnson powerfully notes, we live in a moment of striking "ideological warfare" during which some seek to erase many of the histories of Black and Indigenous peoples, while others write about the Black or Indigenous past without acknowledging the ways that those communities continue to wrestle with the legacies of colonization.4 A year later, the issue remains a live topic in the field. Is it wrong to engage the present in early American historical studies? Such a query presumes that it is possible for historians to generate research questions and interpretations outside of the present. As Alejandra Dubcovsky highlights, modern heteropatriarchal concepts of citizenship and governance have warped our ability to see Native women as vital political players in the early modern era.5 The question also imagines that scholars ought to produce fully disinterested or even objective histories of the past. One only need look at the history of American Indian studies to see the pernicious effects of such aims for historical research. [End Page 762] In the mid-twentieth century, popular assumptions about the allegedly inevitable decline of American Indian peoples led historians and anthropologists to ask questions primarily about how Native nations succumbed to European civilization or why we had lost our cultures. Entering communities and archives with expectations of finding decline, researchers found evidence of cultural erosion and political destruction, leading them to develop study after study of Native American demise. When Julia Lewandoski makes reference to "the popularity of the rise-and-fall trope," she reminds us that this has been the predominant lens for understanding Indigenous nations—as entities ultimately broken by their contact with colonization. Settler logics and languages shaped the scholarship and field reports, and these studies informed policies that did material harm to Native communities. Much has changed since this era, and pathbreaking ethnohistorical and community-engaged scholarship has transformed the field. But the field of Native American history has never been free from modern ideologies or research imperatives, nor is it separate...