Rights Remembered: A Salish Grandmother Speaks on American Indian History and the Future

By Pauline R. Hillaire
University of Nebraska Press (2016)
426 pages

Review by Jennifer Denetdale

Rights Remembered is a history of the Lummi people, a history of the Indigenous peoples of the Northwest Coast of what is now the United States, and it is a history of Indigenous peoples under U.S. colonial rule, which has not ended. Lummi elder Scälla spent her life educating her own Lummi people, Indigenous peoples, and non-Indians on Lummi historical experiences under U.S. colonial rule. In her extensive history, Hillaire offers traditional Lummi perspectives on their connections to the land and waters, and then moves into Lummi and other Northwest Coastal Indigenous peoples’ experiences under colonial rule. Her study draws upon international standards of human rights, thereby and significantly, placing Indigenous matters—history, governance, and politics—into an international forum. Her history offers a Lummi experience and perspective on a pattern of U.S. treatment of Indigenous peoples.

As a Diné/Navajo historian, I have moved away from the field of Indigenous history because it is still considered a subfield of American historiography where the narratives of inclusion, cultural diversity, and multiculturalism still guide how Native peoples’ historical experiences are told. These sorts of historical narratives refuse to acknowledge that Indigenous peoples are not simply a minority group who seek inclusion into the U.S. polity, but peoples who have distinct histories that predate the origins and establishment of the United States as a nation which is founded upon the genocide of Indigenous peoples and the theft of their land. Today, in the 21^st century, Indigenous peoples as part of their respective nations continue the struggles of their ancestors who were met with settlers who used every means of violence and terror to dispossess Indigenous peoples so that today a significant number of our people are faced with all manners of strife, and our nations struggle to realize sovereignty and self-determination on our own terms. Our people have also been scattered to the urban towns and cities within the U.S. where we are considered just one of many minorities.

So, in agreeing to write a review for Rights Remembered, I am reminded of how much I love history and how I had to find my own way through history studies, first as a Ph.D. student and then as an assistant professor of history—find my own way to tell and write the histories of Indigenous peoples that reflect not only our stories of our origins and what we say is valuable to who we are as distinct peoples who are of the earth and remain cognizant of those relationships that connect us to all living beings, but also to refuse standard Native historiography that will not acknowledge the genocide and the dispossession of our people. This history volume by Lummi historian Pauline Hillaire, also known by her Lummi name Scälla, is a welcome addition to the growing number of histories written by Indigenous scholars. Rights Remembered reminds me of why I became a historian who is dedicated to advocacy for my Diné nation and people.

Jennifer Denetdale, Ph.D., is an associate professor of American studies at the University of New Mexico and the author of Reclaiming Diné History.