MONDAY NIGHT LECTURE SERIES | DEAD RECKONINGS | FALL 2024

Council Fires and New Worlds: Settlers, Violence, and Indigenous Reconstruction in the Eighteenth Century

Jeffers Lennox • Wesleyan University

September 16th @ 6pm • Daniel Family Commons

“Indigenous Reconstruction” is a process by which First Peoples remake worlds within and beyond homelands after periods of upheaval. During the eighteenth century, imperial wars spilled into North America and drew Indigenous nations into conflicts not of their making. Peace in Europe rarely meant an immediate cessation in violence across the Atlantic because First Peoples were never pawns of European powers. Only lengthy diplomacy complemented by treaty making could bring Indigenous nations and settler societies into renewed relationships.  By focusing on two Indigenous confederacies that straddle putative settler borders – the Wabanaki (of what is now Maine and the Maritime Provinces) and the Haudenosaunee (of what we call upstate New York and southern Ontario) – this paper will explore how these Indigenous nations reimagined better futures. Looking both backwards and forwards in time, Indigenous leaders worked to bring settlers into their reconstruction in ways that would preserve peace and friendship in an era of colonial expansion and violence.  

Dead Reckonings
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