In Wisconsin, where I currently live and work, UW system faculty have in recent years experienced a cut in take-home pay, lost the right to collective bargaining, witnessed drastic budget cuts for public higher education, and seen tenure protections eroded.  One Wisconsin legislator, the chairman of the Assembly Committee on Colleges and Universities, has even threatened to cut funding for the University of Wisconsin-Madison unless it discontinued a course called “The Problem of Whiteness.”  As Ted Karamanski points out, this hostility toward a perceived liberal bias in higher education is hardly limited to Wisconsin.  Dan Ott correctly warns public history educators to be sure their students are mindful of this political atmosphere.  But this does not mean that public history educators and practitioners should abandon their efforts to promote social and economic justice, decolonize narratives, and promote inclusive interpretations.  Indeed, one could argue that the current political climate adds urgency to these efforts.  As Donald Worster once put it, historians ought to “perform deliberately and thoughtfully the role of cultural analyst, even to the point of presuming now and then to be a self-appointed moral conscience of their society.”[1]

Several of these case statements suggest models for public engagement with the past on issues having to do with social and economic justice, but I’m not sure there are prescriptions for doing “radical” public history (however that is defined) since public history is inherently messy and situational.  While I would concede Ted Karamanski’s point that are problems with the concept of shared authority, public history practitioners must often nonetheless bear in mind to some extent the priorities of the community partners they work with in seeking social and economic justice.  Let me provide one example to illustrate this point.  As a graduate student I worked on a legal/historic report in support of a petition for federal recognition foe the Lemhi Shoshone (Agaidika) Indian people.  They hoped that securing federal recognition would be a step in the direction of a larger goal of re-securing a land base in their aboriginal territory, from which they were removed under questionable circumstances over a century ago.  This project provided me with the topic of my dissertation and subsequent book and also gave rise to a number of ongoing efforts to publicly interpret the history of the Lemhi Shoshone.  The project began at an auspicious time; the Lemhis are Sacajawea’s people, and the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark expedition was approaching.

Against this backdrop, a non-Indian woman from the Midwest who had adopted a Lemhi son and also happened to be a coordinator for the National Coalition on Racism in Sports and Media, travelled to Salmon, Idaho, near the site of the Lemhi’s former reservation.  She learned to her dismay that the high school mascot was an Indian known as the “Salmon Savage.”  She threatened legal action unless the mascot was changed.  The ensuing controversy generated a string of letters to the editor in the local paper, most of which were defensive in nature and dismissive of the criticisms of “outsiders” who failed to appreciate the community’s “heritage.”  For me, this presented an opportunity to use history as a corrective to “heritage,” in this case a euphemism for cultural appropriation and the perpetuation of stereotypes.  To my surprise at the time, many of the tribal members I knew were not interested in joining the fray.  They were interested in Salmon residents’ attitude about Indians, but mainly insofar as they could hinder efforts to return to the area.[2]  While the Lemhis have yet to re-secure a land base in the area, they are welcomed back at the Sacajawea Interpretive, Cultural, and Educational Center, where the community hosts an annual Agaidika Heritage Days in conjunction with the tribe’s annual gathering at the site of its former reservation.

Meanwhile, across the continental divide at the Virginia City, Montana historic site, where the tribe concluded treaty negotiations with local and federal officials in 1868 and 1870, Lemhi history is also being interpreted publicly.  Interpretation at Virginia City had focused almost exclusively on mining history, but collaborative efforts by tribal members, community members, public history practitioners, and public history educators and their students from Washington State University and the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire have resulted in a more inclusive interpretive program in which Lemhi history features prominently.  Recent years have seen living history reenactments of treaty negotiations and the installation of interpretive plaques focused on Lemhi history.  As in Salmon, there is now a public space in Virginia City associated with the tribe–a park named for the leader Tendoy—and tribal members have travelled to the community for powwows.  The research for these interpretive efforts, moreover, turned up a cession document that strengthens the Lemhi case for economic justice in the form of land restoration; federal officials in the Obama administration met with tribal members to discuss the possibility.  A forthcoming documentary film, “In Good Faith,” will highlight all of these efforts, and promote economic justice for the Lemhis.

Frustratingly, increasing public awareness of Lemhi history has tended to benefit the non-Indian communities associated with them more than the tribe itself—federal dollars for the Lewis and Clark bicentennial, for example, went to the City of Salmon for the Sacajawea Center.  And while these communities have welcomed the Lemhi presence and promoted their history, there can be a fine line between inclusion and exploitation.  Nonetheless, relationships between the various stakeholders have improved and awareness of the tribe’s history and claim for social and economic justice has increased.

John W. W. Mann

University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire

[1] Donald Worster, Under Western Skies: Nature and History in the American West (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992) 17.

[2] Ultimately, the school decided to keep the name “Savages” but eliminate the Indian mascot.

Discussion

1 comment
  1. Rod Ariwite,Sr says:

    John, words cannot fully express all the outstanding work that you have done on behalf of the Lemhi Shoshone people and culture..thank you and God Bless you

    Looking forward to the documentary piece

    Rod Ariwite,Sr.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.