Thesis ID: CBB627267294

'The Indians Say': Settler Colonialism and the Scientific Study of North America, 1722 to 1848 (2021)

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“‘The Indians Say’: Settler Colonialism and the Scientific Study of North America, 1722 to 1848” examines the issue of evidence and credibility within natural history by following the circulation of Indigenous testimony through Anglophone networks of scientific knowledge production. By merging the history of science with Native American and Indigenous studies, this dissertation makes two interrelated arguments: first, that during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries information sharing between Indigenous peoples and Anglophone naturalists was both controlled by Indigenous actors and political in nature; and second, that the scientific credibility of Indigenous testimony was informed by colonial ideology and politics. Instead of prevailing scientific norms shaping American settler science, the reverse was true. Using four chronological case studies centered in the early eighteenth-century Carolina piedmont, the late eighteenth-century Eastern Woodlands, the early nineteenth-century Upper Mississippi River valley, and mid nineteenth-century Samoa, this dissertation demonstrates that colonial politics influenced naturalists’ decisions to cite Native American sources. In all four cases, Anglophone naturalists only had access to Indigenous testimony as a result of Indigenous diplomacy and information sharing practices. Moreover in each of these instances, Anglophone naturalists Mark Catesby, Benjamin Smith Barton, John James Audubon, and Titian Ramsay Peale each relied on Indigenous testimony and expertise, but the intellectual value these naturalists ascribed to this same information waxed and waned in direct response to settler colonial Indian policy.

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Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB627267294/

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Authors & Contributors
Rafael Rogério Nascimento dos Santos
Irving-Stonebraker, Sarah
Calandra McCool
Rockey, Robbins
Nair, Aparna
Blakley, Christopher
Concepts
Colonialism
Indigenous peoples; indigeneity
Traditional knowledge
Science and culture
Natural history
Native American civilization and culture
Time Periods
18th century
19th century
17th century
20th century
16th century
21st century
Places
North America
Europe
Citizen Band Potawatomi Indian Tribe of Oklahoma
Nigeria
Amazon River Region (South America)
Hawaii (U.S.)
Institutions
American Philosophical Society
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