Stories of Migration: The Anishinaabeg and Irish Immigrants in the Great Lakes Region

• Published in: History Workshop Journal
• Main Author: Keenan, Deirdre
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford University Press 2007
• Subjects: HISTORY AT LARGE; Indian; anishina*
• Online Access: http://hwj.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/64/1/354; https://doi.org/10.1093/hwj/dbm047

According to the Anishinaabek (Ojibwe, Potawatomi, Odawa), their migration from the eastern shores of North America to the Great Lakes region began with the knowledge that a light-skinned people would cross the great salt water and threaten their survival. My Irish ancestors were among the light-skinned people who followed that same path of migration and settled on land the Anishinaabek were later forced to cede. The stories of the Anishinaabek and my ancestors’ stories share echoes of colonial displacement and devastating hardship. But our migration stories also reveal a history of racism at the heart of American culture, as Europeans, often fleeing oppression themselves, participated in the oppression of American Indians. The United States has not yet reconciled its past nor addressed the ongoing marginalization of American Indians. So I set out to retrace the paths of our two peoples. I wondered what my ancestors, and other immigrants, understood about their relationship to the Indian people whose land they came to occupy, and what I might understand from the stories of the Anishinaabek. When I began, I could not imagine how the Anishinaabe people could point a way to reconcile the past and our separate worlds.