Rural Indigenousness

Melissa Otis has taken on a formidable task. Most scholars who tell the stories of indigenous peoples during the past two centuries deal with reservation communities or with the social networks established by migrants to urban centers. Otis, instead, covers indigenous peoples dispersed at a low density through a large geographic area. Involved are issues of self-identity, community identity, and legal status. Among the resources she mines for this study are local historical societies and museums, newspapers, periodicals, and interviews with descendants of indigenous families long resident in the region. Otis discusses the vast region of upstate New York stretching from Lake Champlain to Lake Ontario and from north of the Mohawk Valley to the Canadian border. The area lacks the attractive fertility and climate of upstate lands south of Lake Ontario, and hence was not settled by Euro-Americans as quickly and never as densely as the rest of upstate New York. Thus, those indigenous and nonindigenous peoples entering to exploit the area were attracted by the quality of wilderness

Archaeology · Ethnology · Geography · Identity (music · Indigenous · Library science · Metis · Mohawk · Wilderness · American Environmental and Regional History · Canadian Identity and History · Ecology · History · Indigenous Health, Education, and Rights