My initial research conducted aimed to assess the perpetuated Image of American Indians within popular culture, and how this romanticised Image presents an inadequacy towards consideration of their often unjustifiable treatment at the hands of a European Society. I began research on this idea in regards to Mount Rushmore, but in doing so realised that this specific topic would prove fallible and decided to take a different path and explore the changing approaches of historical investigation towards Indigenous Americans. Sources used in doing this were mostly historical papers, written from a non-indigenous perspective, and varied from being primary and secondary. I selected such articles as whilst studying the historical …show more content…
In order to effectively discuss this change, I will first deliberate over the changing philosophies surrounding Indian history, how its dynamic nature presents a epistemological defiance to a politicized Western historical tradition. I will then progress to the context of historians who wrote on Indigenous history, and how their assumptions of European superiority resulted in a stubborn bias towards the professionalization of academic inquiry. This discourse is heavily influenced by their context, their writings reflecting the Euro-American colonial assumptions at the time, and the accompanying military subjugation of Native American communities. My paper will also delve into how such approaches have changed over time, taking into consideration conceptual, methodological, and theoretical shifts, along with socio-political historical events that have positively impacted Native sovereignty; such scholarly interpretations, changes in public policy, and race relations aiding the development of Native History. Such changing historical interpretations and perspectives of Native American history will be discussed in detail throughout my essay, analysing how this history was and continues to be largely ignored by historians, from Helen Hunt’s Jackson’s self published A Century of Dishnor in 1890 to the approaches of Social Scientists and Anthropologists in the century to …show more content…
A problem that may arise from using primarily secondary sources is that I will not effectively answer my question due to not being able to account for the changes in American Indian History, unable to provide secondary sources in order to more effectively highlight this. To counteract this, I will attempt to use a variety of other sources, notably primary; including personal accounts, religious commentary, and historical recordings of earlier times. The period of where I will gather my sources begins from the late 1800’s until current, this transgression over time allowing for me to effectively comment on the varying approaches to American Indian history, bringing fore the contextual influence on differing approaches. I would like to direct my essay on some of the thoughts presented in Schloraly essays “Native Americans and American History” by Flavin Francis and “From Savages to Sovereigns: A General Historiography of American Indian History” by Jeffrey P. Shephered, which discuss the deficiencies and limitations of Native-Indian history, yet comment on how such diverse history can be informative and engaging, with a variety of areas of inquiry. I will also endeavour to investigate