Competing Visions of Empowerment: Oneida Progressive-Era Politics and Writing Tribal Histories

Abstract

During the first decades of the twentieth century, a new generation of Native American intellectuals and activists established national organizations such as the Society of American Indians (SAI) and grappled with issues such as private property, reservation industrialization, traditional governance, Euro-American education, and individuality versus tribalism. Dennison Wheelock and Laura Cornelius Kellogg, two citizens of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin, shed light on the broader Progressive Era debates that swept through Indian Country as they engaged in vigorous local and national conversations about the meaning of Indigenous empowerment in modern America and the ideal form that it should take.