David Lewis: Helping tribes in Oregon share their own histories

American history consists of history written primarily from the perspectives of white American historians. This is the truth that many Natives live with regularly. As a researcher and scholar I encounter this situation on a daily basis. The main problem for my work is not only that Native peoples were not and are not engaged when history is written, but historians appear to have ignored available sources when composing histories. This to me is an egregiously consistent problem in American history.

Here in Oregon, about a decade ago, I began working with a cadre of scholars in the region to answer questions in history that my tribe was interested in. I engaged with notable scholars who consistently engaged with Native people, and we began sharing information. Where scholars had not known or worked with other scholars previously we began to connect scholars, through the tribe, with other scholars to help enhance their resources. This out-of-the-box methodology began to produce results. One such project began enhancing the book he tentatively titles “Before Portland: The Native Americans' 'Wappato Valley’”. Boyd, an independent scholar formerly under contract with the Grand Ronde Tribe, began working collaboratively with Tribal scholars to tell the story of the Native Chinookan peoples of the Portland Oregon area before the region became the state of Oregon.