The Nation-State, Its Histories and Archives, and Native Biographies That Transgress Them

In the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries groups of Indigenous Crees and Chippewas were guided through and across the U.S.-Canadian borderlands to settle in the United States by a number of leaders, including chiefs Little Bear (Cree) and Rocky Boy (Chippewa). Their leadership and accomplishments were remarkable. Both weathered resistance to their “foreign” presence in Montana, successfully secured alliances with American politicians and citizens, and accomplished the rare feat of securing federal tribal recognition and reservation lands for their peoples. Despite these impressive and rare accomplishments, their stories have remained largely unknown outside of the Native communities where their joint Chippewa-Cree peoples have lived. This paper will examine how their crossing of the U.S.-Canadian border dropped their stories from Canadian archives and historiographies, while simultaneously failed to have them integrated into American archives and historiographies. Their histories and how they have and have not been told will also be used to examine and deconstruct how so many North American historical narratives are defined by the Euro-American nation-states and their respective federally-focused and organized archives.