“We were at our journey's end”: Settler Sovereignty Formation in Oregon

Abstract

When Esther Bell Hanna migrated to Oregon Territory in September 1852 and documented in her diary her first glimpse of the Columbia River, “she looked out over a landscape that contained relationships both legible and illegible to her.” In this research article, Barber explores those relationships through the lens of settler colonialism and White supremacy that “alienated Indigenous people from their lands through ordinary acts of fencing and plowing fields” and “disorganized terror and calculated war.” Barber also discusses acts of disruption and resistance to White supremacy, and argues that “to grapple with the foundations, legacies, and persistent characteristics of settler colonialism and its twin — White supremacy — is to grapple with the inequities that shape Oregon's history, present, and future in ways both symbolic and material.”