Native Americans, New Voices: American Indian History, 1895-1995 by R. David Edmunds - Term Paper Example

One of the main ideas in the article is that historians who worked in a formal European and academic style were for many decades the only voice permitted to speak on the subject. Edmunds notes that in the early years of the journal there were very few articles which mentioned Native American history. Even the few which were written on the subject did not truly represent things from a Native American point of view, since the Native Americans “remained the supporting cast in a drama whose plot and leading roles were European” (Edmunds, p. 720) He explains this bias in terms of the difference between a society which records things in writing, such as traditional Europeans and a society which passes its history in oral forms.

In America in the early twentieth century there was little interest in Indian “myth and legend” (Edmunds, p. 721) because it was not given equal status with written forms. Historians in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century failed to gather the testimonies of older Native American people and Edmunds admits that this was a big mistake. The point of the article is to say that it is time for “new voices”, that is to say, new Native American voices, to be published in the journal.

From the 1920s until the 1960s there were a few attempts to explore the Native Indian perspective, and these were done by various white scholars, sometimes at considerable risk to themselves and their careers. In the 1960s the Civil Rights Movement was mainly centred on the issues surrounding black Americans and the legacy of slavery and racism but it also raised people’s awareness of Native Indian culture and history. This, in turn, caused a greater demand for university courses that teach Americans of all backgrounds about this part of their history.

Edmunds reveals a somewhat condescending attitude when he describes this movement in university history departments as “the buckskin