Retrieving the Red Continent: settler colonialism and the history of American Indians in the US

Abstract

While present in the contemporary academy, American Indian history remains marginalized by being associated with regional and national histories of the United States. Recently, postcolonial scholarship has provided a pathway out of that marginalization. The postcolonial critique of traditional anthropological and historical writing about indigenous peoples suggests a new way to imagine the relationship between American Indian history and other areas of scholarship. The most promising aspect of this critique is the formulation of ‘settler colonialism’. That framework first emerged among geographers and has recently been embraced by historians and anthropologists. The settler colonial framework offers a way to conceive of the Native past in a transnational context as well as to understand indigenous encounters with modernity as an ongoing struggle with colonial rule rather than as a campaign to accommodate Native people to ‘progress’ and ‘civilization’ or to ‘assimilate’ them into a nation state.

Keywords:

• American Indians
• settler colonialism
• postcolonialism
• assimilation
• sovereignty
• nationalism

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to my research assistant Brian Ingrassia and to my wonderfully insightful and supportive colleagues in the History Workshop and the American Indian Studies program at the University of Illinois, Urbana/Champaign. I also benefited from the insightful critiques of several individuals: Antoinette Burton, Jessica Cattelino, David Anthony Tyeeme Clark, LeAnne Howe, Claudio Saunt, and Patrick Wolfe. This essay began with an invitation from Joel Beinen and his colleagues at the Stanford University Sawyer Seminar; their response encouraged me to keep going.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Frederick E. Hoxie

FREDERICK E. HOXIE is Swanlund Professor in the Department of History, University of Illinois, Urbana/Champaign