[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!]
As was the
case with yesterday’s subject William Apess, Sarah Winnemucca is a figure about
whom I’ve had the chance to write a good deal:
As a
central part of this We’re History
piece on Malheur in Oregon.
As the
focus of a chapter in my book Redefining
American Identity: From Cabeza de Vaca to Barack Obama (2011).
And
numerous times on this blog, including here
on how reading her autoethnographic book changes our sense of the West, here
as a context for one of my favorite TV characters, and here
as part of a post on fraught and crucial questions of “authenticity” and
identity.
There’s a
lot that I love about Winnemucca’s voice, as captured so powerfully in that
aforementioned book, Life Among the
Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims (1883). But most of all I love the way she
combines self-reflection and humility with pride and confidence, blends her hugely
complex individual story with impassioned activism, recognizes the most multilayered
realities yet refuses to allow them to stop her work. We can see that with
particular clarity in the book’s final final two sentences: “Finding it
impossible to do any thing for my people I did not return to Yakima, but after
I left Vancouver Barracks I went to my sister in Montana. After my marriage to
Mr. Hopkins I visited my people once more at Pyramid Lake Reservation, and they
urged me again to come to the East and talk for them, and so I have come.” I’m
so grateful that she did!
Next
thanks tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What
do you think? Indigenous voices or texts you’d highlight, or other thanks you’d
share?
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