Review of Native Historians Write Back: Decolonizing American Indian History edited by Susan A. Miller and James Riding In

Authors

Angela Parker, Dartmouth College

Date of this Version

Fall 2013

Citation

Great Plains Quarterly 33:4 (Fall 2013).

Comments

Copyright © 2013 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska.

Abstract

Susan Miller and James Riding In position this anthology as the first to collect historical work from Native scholars participating in an "Indigenous discourse"-an academic conversation "rooted in North American Indigenous thought" and, they claim, global Indigenous thought. If your essentialism alarm bells are ringing, it is for good reason. Ignore the alarms long enough to work your way through the entire anthology and you will find rich, complicated, vibrant historical analysis and critique from Indigenous historians working in Canada and the United States.

The introduction and framing essays by Susan Miller in part 1 elaborate on the idea of an Indigenous paradigm in the historiography of Native North America. Although clothed in essentialist language and thinking, her essays provide some provocative and vital analysis. By the end, the authority of the works collected here will force you to productively rethink aspects of Miller's framing essays advocating for methodologies that centralize Native historical narrative and experience.