Session Abstract

In the United States and Canada, the early twentieth century was a liminal period in the delineation of racial categories and boundaries of national citizenship.  From Jim Crow to exclusionary immigration laws to women’s suffrage, Americans and Canadians alike vigorously debated who was and who could never be a full member of society.  Native peoples participated in these discussions, yet scholars have only just begun to study the various ways in which American Indians and First Nations mobilized to claim a place for themselves within the modern nation-state.  Native activism has generally been treated as a post-World War II development, and historians have largely focused on the most spectacular and overtly political forms of protest.  During the first three decades of the century, however, American and Canadian Indians actively pursued their claims to rights and resources through the courts, the press, the entertainment industry, and the intertribal organizations that had emerged during the Progressive Era.  Our international and interdisciplinary panel examines the discursive strategies that Native individuals and communities employed to define themselves and defend their interests during this important time of transition.  Taking a place-based approach, Andrea Geiger analyzes the competing discourses of citizenship that white Canadians, First Nations, and Asian immigrants in British Columbia deployed in their fights over fisheries.  Andrew Fisher adopts a biographical lens, using the early career of Yakama activist, actor, and technical advisor Nipo Strongheart to explore the connection between ethnic performance and political reform in the 1920s.  Lionel Larré complements this personal perspective with a study of John Milton Oskison, a Cherokee writer and fellow member of the Society of American Indians.  His literary depictions of Indian Territory, like Strongheart’s dramatic portrayals, contested white representations of Native people and asserted a “New Indian” identity that was simultaneously rooted in tribal space and part of the modern world.  Collectively, these stories of race, place, and citizenship encourage scholars to treat Native Americans as integral and intelligent players in the production of discourses that still influence contemporary understandings of nationhood in North America.