Mohican Archival Activism: Narrating Indigenous Nationalism

Abstract

This dissertation traces the creation of the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican tribal archive and related historical projects from 1968 to the present to show how the Mohican Nation has recovered and reclaimed authority over their historical materials and by extension, their history. I collectively refer to these multifaceted efforts over the last fifty years as “Mohican archival activism” and define this in the context of indigenous studies as the construction of an archival collection that assembles previously scattered sources, establishing indigenous nations as the premier resources on their own history and giving them authority over the assembly and retrieval of those historical materials. I argue that these actions are a strategic type of activism that resists settler-colonial policies that sought to separate Native peoples from their history, allows Mohican tribal members to create new historical narratives of their nation, and constitutes a form of Mohican nation-building by enabling the tribe to assert sovereignty over the collection and presentation of their own historical materials. By tracing the creation of a tribal archive and its mobilization in various projects, I demonstrate how tribal archives have the potential to challenge the control non-Native institutions often hold over indigenous histories and use newly assembled historical materials to counteract damaging representations of indigenous nations.