Faculty Interview - Margaret Huettl
Department of History
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06/03/2019
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This is an interview with Prof. Margaret Huettl
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- [00:00:05.897](speaks in foreign language)
- [00:00:10.300]Margaret Huettl, (foreign language)
- [00:00:18.770]University of Nebraska, (foreign language).
- [00:00:21.270]Hello, my name is Margaret Huettl.
- [00:00:23.710]I am the descendant of
- [00:00:27.650]Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe or Anishnaabe.
- [00:00:30.790]I'm also the descendant of European settlers
- [00:00:33.800]and Assyrian refugees who escaped the Armenian genocide.
- [00:00:41.880]So my research focuses on Anishinaabe history
- [00:00:45.710]looking at the 19th and 20th centuries,
- [00:00:48.780]which is a time period in Native American history
- [00:00:51.330]that people usually think of as
- [00:00:53.660]the low point of Native history,
- [00:00:55.370]the dark days of Native history,
- [00:00:57.320]A time of destruction, dispossession, loss.
- [00:01:03.270]And while it was a very destructive time
- [00:01:09.030]in Native history full of land loss
- [00:01:11.080]and children being taken away to boarding schools,
- [00:01:13.550]there's also this narrative of survival,
- [00:01:16.620]thriving and surviving, not just surviving,
- [00:01:22.961]that speaks to the ongoing strength
- [00:01:26.050]of Ojibwe sovereignty and Native sovereignty more generally.
- [00:01:35.170]We were raised with an understanding
- [00:01:37.950]of what it meant to be Ojibwe.
- [00:01:40.280]And so the story of the persistence of
- [00:01:46.050]Ojibwe identity in my own family,
- [00:01:48.450]despite the federal government's attempts
- [00:01:50.900]to erase Ojibwe people, really showed me
- [00:01:55.720]that the kind of history that you get
- [00:01:57.710]in most history classes and history textbooks
- [00:02:00.940]in the popular media just isn't true.
- [00:02:03.480]Native people survived.
- [00:02:05.300]Native people continue to exist,
- [00:02:06.820]and they exist as sovereign nations.
- [00:02:10.430]So my project specifically looks at
- [00:02:14.310]how Ojibwe sovereignty persisted over time
- [00:02:19.540]and instead of looking at sovereignty
- [00:02:22.010]from a western legal perspective,
- [00:02:24.610]I try to use a perspective that
- [00:02:28.650]the Ojibwe people themselves would understand.
- [00:02:31.870]So I define sovereignty as a series of relationships
- [00:02:36.510]with land, language, sacred history, kinship and ceremony,
- [00:02:43.180]and I look at the ways that these relationships carried
- [00:02:47.650]Ojibwe sovereignty forward throughout
- [00:02:49.760]the 19th and 20th century, specifically focusing on
- [00:02:53.130]how treaties became a vehicle of Ojibwe sovereignty
- [00:02:57.000]that protected and promoted Ojibwe rights
- [00:03:02.010]and relationships with the land
- [00:03:04.020]and the resources within the land through the 1950s.
- [00:03:15.040]So I've been luck to teach a lot of
- [00:03:17.020]Native history centered classes
- [00:03:19.550]with a lot of enthusiastic students
- [00:03:21.260]who are really interested in learning about Native history
- [00:03:24.060]beyond the standard narrative that they've grown up with.
- [00:03:29.120]I teach Introduction to Native Studies
- [00:03:32.580]and I teach that class almost entirely
- [00:03:35.550]using Native sources and Native voices,
- [00:03:38.930]which is something I try to do in my teaching,
- [00:03:41.040]to center Native voices.
- [00:03:44.517]And I teach a version of Native American history
- [00:03:50.260]where I do the same thing.
- [00:03:51.190]Most of the sources used in that class
- [00:03:53.040]are from Native perspectives.
- [00:03:55.870]In the Introduction to Native Studies class,
- [00:03:59.180]the previous semester, we did a local learning project
- [00:04:05.780]where we learned about the
- [00:04:09.420]indigenous history of Lincoln itself.
- [00:04:11.770]So from time immemorial to the present day,
- [00:04:16.458]what is the indigenous story of Lincoln?
- [00:04:19.200]Where are the indigenous places?
- [00:04:21.220]What's important to indigenous people?
- [00:04:22.920]What has been the presence of indigenous people on campus?
- [00:04:26.150]And then we created a website with a map
- [00:04:29.536]and information about the different places in Lincoln
- [00:04:35.050]where there's this really rich Native history
- [00:04:37.640]that a lot of people don't know much about.
- [00:04:44.496]I also teach a class called The Mythic West,
- [00:04:47.590]where, on the surface, it sounds like
- [00:04:51.090]we're gonna watch a lot of Westerns and we do,
- [00:04:53.920]but we look at the myths that create
- [00:04:57.930]our idea of the American West and look at
- [00:05:01.670]how that relates to the real history of the West.
- [00:05:07.290]And we look at everything from Mark Twain
- [00:05:10.910]to the searchers to Westworld today
- [00:05:14.220]and the evolution of that myth,
- [00:05:16.410]and also the stories that marginalize groups in the West.
- [00:05:21.130]Native Americans, Mexican Americans,
- [00:05:24.470]Chinese Americans are also telling about themselves.
- [00:05:28.630]And how the West really tells a story
- [00:05:31.580]about American history and how we see ourselves as American.
- [00:05:37.970]And then I also teach U.S. history.
- [00:05:41.280]And my U.S. history classes are influenced by
- [00:05:45.500]my perspective, as someone, when I was a student,
- [00:05:49.160]my stories, I didn't hear my family's stories
- [00:05:52.800]in a traditional U.S. history classroom.
- [00:05:55.810]The things that I knew weren't there.
- [00:05:59.430]The voices that I wanted to hear weren't there.
- [00:06:02.690]And so I try to teach U.S. history
- [00:06:05.280]from as many perspectives as possible,
- [00:06:08.010]paying attention to the students
- [00:06:10.200]who are in the classroom and trying to make sure
- [00:06:15.510]that as many perspectives as possible are included
- [00:06:19.360]in teaching and understanding U.S. history.
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