Slinking down in my chair of the high school classroom, I listen with dread to the discussion about Native Americans. I feel no connection to the hostile, savage, primitive people I am hearing about. How can the words on this paper differ so radically from those of my elders? Where did these historians get their information about Native Americans?
My earliest memory of stories told by my grandmother are those about the United States–Dakota conflict of 1862. When I first read historical accounts of that event I excitedly picked out events I knew were true because my grandmother had talked about them. My respect for the author was gauged by how often he or she made mention of stories I'd heard in the oral tradition. Growing up in a Dakota family with a rich oral tradition, I often heard my grandmother end a story with, "that was never written in a history book." It was her account of the Dakota past which fostered my love for history and led to my pursuit of a degree in the discipline. But reconciling differing conceptions of history—those of my native community and academia—has been full of challenges and frustrations, the gulf between them often seemingly unbridgeable.
The personal scenario above illustrates some of the basic issues pertaining to the relationship between academic historians writing Native American history and the Native American people about whom they are writing. This relationship has been fraught with mistrust on both sides: historians mistrust the ability of native people to keep accurate accounts of their historical past while Native Americans mistrust the ability of historians to accurately interpret Native American historical realities. At the core of the mistrust is a basic argument about who has the authority to interpret Native American history and on what sources that interpretation should be based.
