Transgressive Adoptions: Dakota Prisoners’ Resistances to State Domination Following the 1862 U.S.–Dakota War

Abstract

In Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History, Michel Trouillot describes the “erasure and banalization” that characterize historiography of the Haitian Revolution. In a chapter titled “An Unthinkable History,” he observes how the tropes of modern history writing are identical to figures of discourse in the late eighteenth century, arguing persuasively that these historiographical tropes take two forms. On the one hand, “some narratives cancel what happened through direct erasure of facts or their relevance,” while on the other hand, some “narratives sweeten the horror or banalize the uniqueness of a situation by focusing on details.” The combined effect of these tropes or formulas is “a powerful silencing” of nondominant narratives, one that renders them, and questions about them, “unthinkable.” An analogous erasure surrounds the aftermath of the U.S.–Dakota War between United States and Minnesota militia and Dakota warriors reluctantly transgressive adoptions Dakota prisoners’ resistances to state Domination Following the 1862 u.s.–Dakota War