Firsting and Lasting:
Writing Indians Out of Existence in New England

Sponsored by On Native Land:
Leverett Advocacy and Education Group
A Zoom Presentation by Dr. Jean M. O'Brien
Professor Jean O’Brien (White Earth Ojibwe) will discuss how local historians in New England, writing between 1820 and 1880, promoted the myth of Indian extinction, if they wrote about the Indigenous population at all.

Local historians erased Indians from the record by focusing on “firsting,” which refers to the practice of listing the firsts of the proud English (e.g. first born, first settlement) and then “lasting,” in which local histories told of the tragic disappearance of the last members of the Indian population, who had not disappeared at all. Dr. O'Brien will describe how these patterns were perpetuated and how they inform our present day.

During the discussion, presenters will read from the historical record (found in the Leverett Library and in Amherst’s Jones Library Special Collections), which demonstrates how western Massachusetts “firsted" and "lasted" its Indigenous people and often "replaced" them with monuments.



Sponsored by On Native Land:
Leverett Advocacy and Education Group

HISTORIC NORTHAMPTON
46 Bridge Street
Northampton, MA 01060

info@historicnorthampton.org
Image: Cover of Firsting and Lasting by Jean M. O'Brien