White American Violence on Tribal Peoples on the Oregon Coast

Abstract

In this Oregon Voices essay, David G. Lewis and Thomas J. Connolly discuss how “acts of physical injury, murder, and trauma” against Native people “provide insight into how White supremacy was institutionalized in Oregon.” Beginning with the fur-trade era in Oregon Country, Lewis and Connolly use primary sources and secondary scholarship to document how people of European descent established new laws and customs in the region, ignoring tribal governance that had existed long before their arrival. That violence was marked on the landscape through battles and removal, in the legal system that provided no justice for Native people, and on paper with written words. Lewis and Connolly argue that “bearing witness to this violence is crucial to understanding” the foundations of White supremacy and “is important to the process of recovery and healing efforts of Native people” — a process that is still young.