The Indians Say: Storytelling, Settler Colonialism and American Natural History, 1722 to 1846

This talk discusses the use of information attributed to Indigenous sources within eighteenth and nineteenth century Anglophone natural history. Early modern naturalists studying North American flora and fauna frequently sought out the expertise of Indigenous people, who they simultaneously regarded as authoritative knowers and objects of study. But diplomatic alliances, specific cultural protocols, and regional dynamics all encouraged (or prevented) information sharing between settler naturalists and Indigenous people and these contexts in turn shaped how Anglophone naturalists presented and cited Indigenous expertise in published natural history. The talk explores the relationship between evidence, identity, and colonialism and examines how ideas about extraction and information underpinned the epistemology of early modern natural history. It also gestures towards present-day manifestations of these issues within scientific approaches to TEK (traditional ecological knowledge).

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