{"id":2611,"date":"2024-01-18T21:46:34","date_gmt":"2024-01-18T21:46:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/as.vanderbilt.edu\/robert-penn-warren-center\/?p=2611"},"modified":"2024-02-14T21:49:25","modified_gmt":"2024-02-14T21:49:25","slug":"indigenous-removals-and-their-legacies-a-reading-guide-to-start-campus-conversations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/as.vanderbilt.edu\/robert-penn-warren-center\/2024\/01\/18\/indigenous-removals-and-their-legacies-a-reading-guide-to-start-campus-conversations\/","title":{"rendered":"Indigenous Removals and Their Legacies: A Reading Guide to Start Campus Conversations"},"content":{"rendered":"

Helen Makhdoumian <\/strong>is a Collaborative Humanities Postdoctoral Program Fellow with the Department of English.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
Chickasaw students preparing for Vanderbilt at the Wall & Mooney School in Franklin, Tennessee. From left: William T. Ward, George W. Burriss, William Bourland, Joe H. Goforth, T.B. McLish, Andrew Courtney, L.C. Burriss, J. Boudinot Ream and Jacob L. Thompson (The American Indian, March 1930)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Last semester at Vanderbilt, I attended talks for \u201cCherokee and Chickasaw Students at Vanderbilt, 1885-1899,\u201d a library exhibit<\/a> organized by Professor Daniel Sharfstein, and the panel \u201cThe Land We Occupy: Vanderbilt Past and Present,\u201d organized by the RPW Center\u2019s Spatial Histories seminar. During the Q&As, I <\/span>witnessed the energy for further conversation on campus. I write this as a resource for anyone interested in thinking through the questions raised during these events. In opening remarks for the RPW panel, for instance, <\/span>Professor Sara Safransky invited audience members to imagine \u201chow to better acknowledge these histories\u201d and \u201cwhat right living means in the context of this knowledge.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Conceptual Frameworks\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Several conceptual frameworks for the study of collective memory can facilitate discussions about dark pasts. These include <\/span>\u201csettler memory\u201d<\/span><\/a> from Kevin Bruyneel and <\/span>\u201cdirectional memory,\u201d<\/span><\/a> which Mishuana Goeman (Tonawanda Band of Seneca) adapts from poet Esther Belin (Din\u00e9). Additionally, Lee Maracle (St\u00f3\ua789l\u014d Nation) identifies practices of <\/span>\u201cre-membering\u201d<\/span><\/a> in her oratories. Literary texts which address remembrance practices include National Monuments <\/a><\/span>by poet Heid E. Erdrich (Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwe).<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Removal<\/strong><\/p>\n

On the topic of removal, I recommend the novel <\/span>The Removed<\/span><\/i><\/a> by Brandon Hobson (Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma). In part, Hobson confronts racist imagery of Native peoples in video games. Regarding the Trail of Tears, the memoir <\/span>Poet Warrior<\/span><\/i><\/a> by Joy Harjo (Mvskoke\/Creek) describes Oklahoma as a place which \u201cbegan as a kind of refugee camp for Natives moved at gunpoint from the East, followed by droves of settlers.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In my undergraduate course this Spring, \u201cThe Repair Work of Righting and Writing,\u201d I will teach from <\/span>Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future<\/span><\/i><\/a> by Patty Krawec (Lac Seul First Nation). Krawec teaches readers about the aftermaths of removals, including\"\" contestations over collective memory and the formation of new communal relationships in the face of dispersion. Moreover, Krawec guides readers to comprehend the overlaps and distinctions between experiences of migration for immigrants and refugees, Indigenous peoples, and arrivants that so define the history of the nation-state.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ll also teach the poem \u201c38\u201d from <\/span>Whereas<\/span><\/i><\/a> by Layli Long Soldier (Oglala Lakota).The poem\u2019s speaker contemplates memorialization practices while correcting settler rhetoric about historical events: the hanging of the thirty-eight Dakota men, an order signed by then President Abraham Lincoln, and the exile of Dakota from their homelands. <\/span>Whereas<\/span><\/i> resonates with <\/span>Standing with Standing Rock: Voices from the #NoDAPL Movement<\/span><\/i><\/a>, <\/span><\/i>which we\u2019ll also take up.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Indian Boarding Schools<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 2021, US Secretary of the Interior <\/span>Deb Haaland (Pueblo Laguna)<\/span><\/a> announced the Department\u2019s initiative to uncover the truth about US federal Indian boarding schools. The statement emerged around the same time as newspaper headlines regarding the discovery of unmarked graves at residential schools in Canada. To broach these exigent issues unfolding outside the classroom, one can turn to the dystopian young adult novels <\/span>The Marrow Thieves<\/span><\/i><\/a> (2017) and <\/span>Hunting by Stars<\/span><\/i><\/a> (2021) by Cherie Dimaline (Georgian Bay M\u00e9tis) or to the creative non-fiction book <\/span>Genocidal Love: A Life After Residential School<\/span><\/i><\/a> (2020) by Bevann Fox (Pasqua First Nation). The latter lends itself nicely to discussion on the topics of recognition, reconciliation, and reparation taken up by Audra Simpson (Mohawk of Kahnaw\u00e0:ke) and Glen Coulthard (Yellowknives Dene) in their critical writings on <\/span>\u201crefusal\u201d<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>\u201cgrounded normativity,\u201d<\/span><\/a> respectively.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Different Forms of Displacement<\/strong><\/p>\n

Some Indigenous studies scholars use \u201cremoval\u201d as an encompassing term to address different forms of displacement beyond its traditional usage to mean territorial dispossession. Kathryn Walkiewicz (Cherokee Nation) writes of the <\/span>\u201clogic of Indigenous and Black exclusion\u201d<\/span><\/a> in the formation of statehood. Leanne Betasamosake<\/span> Simpson (Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg) makes the case for the terminology of \u201cexpansive dispossession,\u201d or removal \u201cfrom the present\u201d and \u201crelationships that are meaningful\u2026politically and otherwise,\u201d in her work on <\/span>\u201cresurgence theory.\u201d<\/span><\/a> These texts can be taught alongside what Jean M. O\u2019Brien (White Earth Ojibwe) identifies as the processes of <\/span>\u201cfirsting and lasting,\u201d<\/span><\/a> or the narrativization of American Indian extinction through the trope of the \u201cvanishing Indian,\u201d as well as what O\u2019Brien and Lisa Blee call the <\/span>\u201cmonumental mobility\u201d<\/span><\/a> of the Cyrus E. Dallin statue <\/span>Massasoit.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s to future conversations on campus inspired by these and other publications, many of which are available in the Vanderbilt library system and are hyperlinked accordingly.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"Helen Makhdoumian<\/strong> is a literary studies scholar who takes up a relational approach to theorize the legacies of collective violence in the Middle East and in North America. In so doing, she expands upon discourses in trauma, memory, and genocide studies, as well as diaspora, transnational, and migration studies. Her book project,\u00a0Nested Memory and the After-Words of Removal, focuses on multigenerational transmissions of memory in the face of the recursivity of collective trauma. It features contemporary texts by Armenian American, Palestinian American, American Indian, and First Nations authors. She holds a PhD in English from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Helen Makhdoumian is a Collaborative Humanities Postdoctoral Program Fellow with the Department of English. Last semester at Vanderbilt, I attended talks for \u201cCherokee and Chickasaw Students at Vanderbilt, 1885-1899,\u201d a library exhibit organized by Professor Daniel Sharfstein, and the panel \u201cThe Land We Occupy: Vanderbilt Past and Present,\u201d organized by the RPW Center\u2019s Spatial Histories…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":2612,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[16,19],"tags":[12],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/cdn.vanderbilt.edu\/vu-cas\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/25\/2024\/01\/18212016\/Chickasaw-Students-Preparing-for-Vanderbilt-.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/as.vanderbilt.edu\/robert-penn-warren-center\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2611"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/as.vanderbilt.edu\/robert-penn-warren-center\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/as.vanderbilt.edu\/robert-penn-warren-center\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/as.vanderbilt.edu\/robert-penn-warren-center\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/60"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/as.vanderbilt.edu\/robert-penn-warren-center\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2611"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/as.vanderbilt.edu\/robert-penn-warren-center\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2611\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2621,"href":"https:\/\/as.vanderbilt.edu\/robert-penn-warren-center\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2611\/revisions\/2621"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/as.vanderbilt.edu\/robert-penn-warren-center\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/as.vanderbilt.edu\/robert-penn-warren-center\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/as.vanderbilt.edu\/robert-penn-warren-center\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/as.vanderbilt.edu\/robert-penn-warren-center\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}