A book by Rose Miron

Indigenous Archival Activism by Rose Miron chronicles the efforts of the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican Nation Historical Committee to develop a centralized Mohican tribal archive aimed at reclaiming, reconstructing, and preserving Indigenous identity and culture. Dr. Rose Miron comes to this project as the previous Director of the D’arcy McNickle Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies at the Newberry Library; she is now Vice President of Research and Education at Northwestern University. She is a historian and archival scholar whose work focuses on Indigenous archives, community-based historical practice, and the ethical responsibilities of non-Indigenous researchers working with Native communities. This book is perhaps her most notable work to date, but she has a new multi-media public history project called Indigenous Chicago, which she is currently working on, as well as previous works researching Native boarding schools and artifact repatriation in and around the Great Lakes.

Indigenous Archival Activism follows a group of people descended from ancient “rememberers,” individuals whose role within the tribe was to document history, maintain records, and preserve knowledge to pass down through generations and later for use in dealings with the United States government. Over time, this information transitioned from a purely oral tradition to written documentation, and in the modern era, these collections have become increasingly important as community members look back to their cultural history for answers. After a devastating fire in the 1960s threatened to erase much of Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican history, it became clear that preservation could no longer rest with a few individuals. This realization led to the creation of the Historical Committee, spreading responsibility across the community to stabilize, organize, and protect their archival collections. The archive also became a tool for fostering cultural engagement and analysis within the tribe itself. Miron’s position as a non-Indigenous, non-tribally affiliated historian adds an important layer to the work, as Indigenous Archival Activism also serves as a blueprint for historians navigating questions of representation, authority, and ethics. The book demonstrates how scholars can work within established protocols, especially guarded ones such as tribal communities, to amplify Indigenous voices and histories rather than exploit them. Many sources were used to finish this book: “Using archival sources such as meeting notes, newspaper articles, and correspondence, the book traces the multidimensional work of the historical committee from 1968 to the early twenty 2020s.” (Miron, 3)

Cultural exploitation was unfortunately very commonplace in the past, as colonial settlers controlled the narrative of the tribe as they forcibly moved them from their ancestral lands in New York numerous times, eventually stopping in Wisconsin. Religion was erased, languages were erased, and as with many indigenous peoples throughout the world, Christianity was imposed on everyone in the place of their real culture. It is for this reason that a lot of what we know of these tribes, often simply known as “Mohicans,” comes from documents from colonial settlers discussing the tribe without taking the time to understand their culture. This created gaps or outright silences in the historical record, often filled in by pop culture products of varying veracity, including James Fenimore Cooper’s novel The Last of the Mohicans and its subsequent 1936 and 1992 film adaptations. The Last of the Mohicans was especially damaging as, as the title would imply, it built a false narrative that the Mohicans were somehow extinct, so asking for records or trying to repatriate artifacts proved difficult at times.

This book opens with a fairly lengthy introduction focused on defining what “Indigenous archival activism” actually means, followed by a discussion of the three pillars the author identifies: access, sovereignty, and new narratives. The book states that the term “archival activism” is frequently associated with a political agenda towards social transformation and challenging discrimination, in terms of the indigenous populations, the term can be used to signify a grassroots movement to establish and develop tribal archives, return and secure tribal history and rights during the restoration era (Milon, 3)

The first of the three pillars is access. Access is presented as operating in two directions. On one hand, Miron discusses the Historical Committee’s early efforts to locate Mohican materials that had been scattered across the country due to theft, private collecting, or removal to distant museums. Committee members often went to great lengths just to view or photocopy materials, sometimes traveling from Oklahoma to Wisconsin. Many of these collections were poorly cataloged, forcing members to sift through countless unrelated items on the chance that something relevant might surface.

Access also works in the opposite direction, as the Committee came to realize they needed to avoid replicating the same barriers they had encountered. This meant properly identifying and cataloging materials, as well as making records available online so future researchers and community members would not have to undertake similar cross-country searches to access their own history.

The next pillar is sovereignty, which describes the need to have control over one’s culture and history, letting go of any colonial control over it to aid in nation-building. It would be easy to just collect the sources previously recorded without any new insight, but the same conclusions and potential falsehoods would likely resurface. A need to reconceptualize and give due context to known sources, or to look for previously unknown silences, would be a necessity. Milon discusses the fact that many settler accounts treat the native population like unimportant objects with no history, law, or culture, despite many sources recording those same three things almost immediately afterwards. Natives were often voiceless within these narratives, seen as savages and glossed over. By not only controlling how this information is seen, but also who has access to this information in general, the tribal leaders establish an important part of national sovereignty and security.

The final of the three pillars is new knowledge, which is produced from these materials in the manner outlined above. From almost the very beginning, the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohicans made the creation of such materials as oral histories, language courses, and cultural programming available to the Mohican community to help rebuild their culture. Since many ancestors were rendered voiceless, as mentioned before, modern tribespeople were interviewed so that future generations would know what game before, continuing the mission of the ancient rememberer.
Personally, a highlight of the book that I enjoyed reading about the most was the obscene lengths that early committee members went to in order to collect their history. Recycling cans for gas money, working tirelessly, hunched over a microfiche machine, scouring newspapers, doing everything without a monetary backing a lot of times (although they did secure grants at times) shows the dedication to the cause they had, and it is an inspiration to read about it. If I can be half as determined and driven as they were in my own personal historical pursuits, it will be very worth it.

Rose Miron did everything in her power to establish a good working relationship with the tribal leadership while making this book. She came to this project as an undergraduate after watching a video series documenting the false notion that the Mohicans were already all gone. This sparked an interest in her in the tribal history of the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican Nation, and she was eventually invited to functions such as Committee meetings. She asked the tribe for permission to work on the committee’s history for her doctoral thesis, and worked closely with them to come at the project from a respectful vantagepoint. Dr. Miron admirably did everything in a way that all historians should strive for when working within cultures not their own. This book showcases what can happen when you do things right, and members of the community wrote a foreword to the book in appreciation for everything she did.

Indigenous Archival Activism: Mohican Interventions in Public History and Memory, by Rose Miron is not only an interesting look at the work of historians excelling at their field even under the most troubling of circumstances, but a roadmap that every researcher should try to follow, especially when working with cultures that are not one’s own. The amount of mutual respect between the author and the tribe was great to see, especially when being a white historian looking at indigenous history often has a checkered past full of broken promises and exploitation. This is a book I will keep in my library, as many lessons can be learned about what can be done in the field if done the right way.