“Out of Time” and “Out of Place”

Abstract

Asian-born Juliana Hu Pegues was raised on Tlingit lands in Juneau, Alaska, providing her with a unique perspective on the multiethnicity of many of Alaska’s people. From this perspective she has constructed a rich, compelling analysis of how indigenous, Asian American, and settler colonial studies can help explain a seldom recognized phenomenon: the absence of multiethnic individuals and cultural traditions from mainstream, standard accounts of Alaska’s past and evolution. That absence is unfortunately typical of the work of many Alaska historians, including somewhat my own. By bringing copious citations to these studies into conversation on Alaska’s development, a reflection of her remarkably broad research, Hu Pegues expands greatly the scope of Alaska history and invites its students to reflect on how the racialized and gendered past has infected the work of previous scholars, as well as generations of non-minority Alaskan residents and leaders. Hu Pegues writes that Alaska Natives were “out of time”; they were viewed as primitive by the dominant, settler population. They did not fit the imperial colonial settler vision of what an American inhabited place should be. Further, they were either resistant to or incapable of catching up to the present time. At the same time, Asian immigrants and laborers were “out of place,” unwelcome as settlers or community residents even though their labor was viewed as necessary. They also were incompatible with the settler colonial view. These exclusions provided some common cause among the two groups, neither of which were afforded legitimacy in the view of the dominant culture.