Learning Indigenous history
Thank you for publishing the article by Dylan Walsh ’11MEM concerning Professor Ned Blackhawk and his research (“Reshaping the Story,” July/August). My own life taught me that ignoring the role of Native Americans leaves a dangerous blind spot in American self-understanding.
Before coming to Yale, I studied in public schools in north-central Pennsylvania. My history classes at that time included little mention of Native Americans and nothing about the Paxton Boys militia from Central Pennsylvania, cited in the article.
Regarding local Pennsylvania history, I became aware of the “Great Runaway” decades later when, during a visit to my hometown, I encountered an exhibit in a museum. The exhibit consisted of a scale model of a wooden stockade, with the caption: “Fort Muncy. Settlers sought refuge here in 1778 when Indians invaded the settlers.” I paused. Was I reading the caption correctly? Weren’t the settlers, by their occupation of the land, invading the Indigenous people?
Perhaps I would not have questioned the caption if, between my time at Yale and my visit to the museum, I had not lived and worked with Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank. There, I encountered settlers who were as uncompromising and as scornful of local inhabitants as the Paxton Boys, about whom I have now (thanks to your article) learned.
America’s popular interpretation of its own history, with its righteous settlers and its vicious Indians, has long distorted Americans’ views not only of themselves but also of the world outside. I applaud Professor Blackhawk for his efforts to set the record straight.
John Gault ’66
Orsières, Switzerland
I am a Tlingit from Alaska and thought the article was pretty good. It’s always nice to lift up one of our own with good stories.
At the end of the day all of America, including Alaska and Canada, is still Aboriginal land. Other folks just live here now. Even today in America, with 594 federally recognized tribes, it’s like trying to describe the cosmos! Infinite factors covering infinite time, where we continue to chase elusive economies of scale to be recognized citizens of the world.
Don Bremner
Yakutat, AK
Having served the Navajo Nation as medical personnel in the late 1960s, it is a particular pleasure to read about Professor Ned Blackhawk. Getting one’s mind around the excruciating history of the US and its interactions with Native tribes is the stuff of nightmares. The “Long Walk” of the Navajo should be integral to every American history course in every US school, college, and university.
Professor Blackhawk’s goal—“the integration of Native Americans into a narrative of America”—is, indeed, a huge task, both admirable and eagerly awaited.
Judith Muggia
Lexington, MA
I found the alumni magazine article about Professor Blackhawk and the history of American Indians just terrific. After two years of American history classes, I could have said Indians taught the pilgrims to plant corn and later on there was Custer’s Last Stand. Great to be teaching us so much more.
Tim Wollaeger ’66
La Jolla, CA
I found your article on Ned Blackhawk to be extremely informative, and I encourage future articles highlighting the Native American Cultural Center and activities related to Indigenous people. I am a WASP working with members of the Abenaki tribe in central Vermont along the Connecticut River to establish a vegetable garden and related educational programs. I was amazed to learn this area has been inhabited by Indigenous people for over 13,000 years. I was a history major at Yale—how did the history of these people escape my knowledge until now? I am excited to learn about the experience of the Abenakis and assume others want to learn the history of the Indigenous people who lived in their area.
P.S. I’ve ordered The Rediscovery of America.
John Reid ’66
Quechee, VT
Bravo! This is a powerful and long overdue story. I trust similar stories are being told all over the Indigenous world. One is at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site in Catskill, New York: the exhibition Native Prospects: Indigeneity and Landscape, curated by Professor Scott Manning Stevens (Akwesasne Mohawk) and traveling next to the Florence Griswold Museum in Connecticut.
Susan Ball ’78PhD
Hudson, NY
A Tennesseean at the top
Congratulations to Maurie McInnis becoming president of Yale (“McInnis Named Yale’s 24th President,” July/August). It should be pointed out that news releases from Yale failed to mention she lived in Knoxville, Tennessee, for 14 years, graduating from the Webb School of Knoxville in 1984 (which I also attended briefly) while her parents were both professors at the University of Tennessee.
As Knoxville’s longest-serving mayor (16 years), I am proud that a person who attended elementary and high schools in Knoxville now leads Yale University. We hope she returns to visit and speak.
She has the opportunity to be a healing presence for the entire Yale community.
Victor Ashe ’67 *
Knoxville, TN
An obligation to know
I had heard about the project to investigate Yale’s historical ties with slavery, and I had enjoyed reading some of the documents that were published in earlier issues of the Yale Alumni Magazine. However, I very much appreciated the article introducing highlights from the book and the exhibition at the New Haven Museum (“Yale, Slavery, and Its Aftermaths,” May/June).
I will make a special trip to New Haven to see the exhibit. Although we cannot change the history that has produced such radical differences in the wealth, education, and power of whites and Blacks in America, we have an obligation to know about it and to allow that knowledge to inform our actions today.
Laurie Nussdorfer ’72
Amenia, NY
On renaming Calhoun
Mark Williams’s criticism of President Salovey for changing his position and “caving” in the renaming of Calhoun College is arguably a fair comment (Letters, July/August). But it completely misses a much more fundamental point: the committee appointed by President Salovey rightly took the opportunity to correct the egregious error Yale made in the 1930s when it named a college after John C. Calhoun [Yale Class of 1804].
Calhoun was not only the holder of a great many slaves—far more than any of the Yale presidents or others after whom colleges were named—but he was a fierce supporter of slavery. Even worse, he was a leading exponent of the doctrine of “nullification”: a state has the right to nullify or veto Federal laws and secede from the Union. This view led his home state of South Carolina to secede and precipitate the Civil War—a calamity that is still with and will long outlast us.
As Professor David Blight makes abundantly clear in his book Yale and Slavery, Yale had from its very beginning been consistently racist in dealing with people of color. Until well into the nineteenth century it admitted no black students. When it did start admitting them, the numbers were trivial. It refused to hire black students who earned degrees. Until the 1960s there were almost no black undergraduates. This has left a long dark blot on Yale’s escutcheon.
It is neither possible nor desirable to try and remove all those blots. At the same time, I think it’s entirely appropriate to remove the most egregious examples of them. I don’t recall President Salovey’s response to the storm of criticism elicited by his change of position on renaming Calhoun College, but he might have remembered Emerson’s famous dictum: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”
Jay Greer ’54
Essex, CT
Leaning left?
Once again, readers of your letters to the editor are subjected to conservatives bemoaning Yale’s “political correctness” and “liberal indoctrination” (Letters, July/August). One can only wonder how the delicate conservative sensibilities of Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, Ron DeSantis, Josh Hawley, J. D. Vance, Ben Carson, Alex Azar, Steve Mnuchin, Wilbur Ross, John Bolton, and convicted seditionist Stewart Rhodes survived their time at Yale.
John Solow ’76
Winter Springs, FL
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* In our print edition and in an earlier version of this online article, we erroneously indicated that Victor Ashe was in the Class of ’72. We regret the error.
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Regarding Jay Greer's.notion that the "south precipitated the civil war " it must be remembered that the south joined the Union in 1786. when at the Constitutional Convention, the south required that their slaves be acknowledged and recognized when determining representation in Congress. Later on Lincoln declared the slaves to be free and disregarded the founding acknowledgement of slaves presence in the south. The south wanted to secede. They did not want a war It was Lincoln who precipitated a civil war of conquest by forcing the south to remain in the union..Lincoln did not free the slaves in the north or even the slaves from southern slave states that fought alongside the north . It was a war preserve the size and power of the Union not a war to free the slaves.It was Kincoln's war
REGARDING JAY GREER' comment that the South. precipitated to civil war, it must be remembered that the South wished to secede from the Union. It was Lincoln who refused to let them go. He faught the civil war not to free the slaves but to preserve the size and power of the Union.
Re: "Leaning Left?" What, exactly, is Mr. Solow's point?
Is he suggesting there's no political bias on campus? Since about 90% of faculty political contributions go to Democrats, that would be extraordinary.
That alumni shouldn't call out political bias? Why not?
Or since he can identify high profile conservative politicians with Yale degrees, there's nothing to complain about? (Strangely he omits HW and W Bush, and Justice Thomas).
Or, perhaps he's disturbed the YAM publishes letters critical of the political environment on campus.
In any event, YAM does an admirable job soliciting and printing a wide range of thought provoking and well written letters each issue. Mr Solow's, however, isn't one of them.