November 25, 2025: Indigenous Voices: William Apess

[Thanksgiving is a hugely fraught holiday for us AmericanStudiers, but I also have a ton I’m thankful for. So this year I wanted to combine those two perspectives by highlighting indigenous voices, past and present, for whose contributions to our collective conversations I’m profoundly appreciative!]

First, just some of the many pieces I’ve published about Apess:

Countless blog posts, including here on his critical patriotic masterpiece ”Eulogy on King Philip,” here on Apess as an autoethnographic writer, and here on why we should collectively remember him so much more fully.

This for the American Writers Museum blog.

And as part of this Saturday Evening Post Considering History column on the Mashpee Revolt.

In the middle of those three hyperlinked blog posts, I dedicated my last paragraph to Apess’s stunning sermon “An Indian’s Looking-Glass for the White Man” (1833). If I were forced to boil Apess down to one thing all Americans should learn, it would be that text, which is quite possibly the most sarcastic and smart, bracing and beautiful, righteously angry and generously graceful—to put it simply, the most human—work in the American literary canon. I could say more, but instead I’ll ask you to read that hyperlinked version (which seems to be working—the hyperlink in my prior blog post had died, as they so often do) and listen to this unique and vital American voice, for whom I will be forever grateful.  

Next thanks tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Indigenous voices or texts you’d highlight, or other thanks you’d share?