Turtle Talk

The History News Network posted an essay by Herbert Gans today on Uses of History.  He was making a distinction between Present-oriented history and Past-oriented history.  His point was that the former is looking to history for insights into the present, while the latter is concerned only with the past.  Specifically he writes,

Present-oriented history recounts historical events, processes and other social situations that are useful for understanding what is happening now, even if such comparisons are risky when incompletely done or decontextualized. This kind of history also reports and analyzes the origin of present organizations, institutions, social processes etc. with special attention to how their pasts continue into or shape the present.

and,

Another kind of present-oriented history originates with currently topical events and explores their past in order to better understand the present. Americanists can search the past for roots to our current economic troubles, just as historians of the Mideast trace today’s upheavals to the region’s past.

He compares this history with Past-oriented history, which might be considered history for history’s sake.  Past history is not written to give us insight into the present.  He argues that, for example, a study of tools of 19th century sharecroppers would not give us insights into the plight of urban African-American poor today.  And while it is true that scholars engage in that type of history writing, his main example is particularly unfortunate:

Past-oriented history is about events and people that are not relevant in any way to the present, for example a history of Lake Michigan area Native American settlements during the 15th century. I suppose one could even write a history of Reconstruction that makes no connection to the present, although given the continuing interest in the subject, not to mention the role it played in the arrival of Jim Crow, that would be a difficult task.

While his point about the existence of past-oriented history scholarship might be well taken, stating that the history of Native settlements in 15th century Lake Michigan area are “not relevant in anyway to the present” is simply wrong.  In fact, those settlement patterns were vital to the 2007 consent decree negotiations and the final decree.  See, Matthew L.M. Fletcher, ‘Occupancy’ and ‘Settlement’: Anishinaabemowin and the Interpretation of Michigan Indian Treaty Language. Those settlement patterns are relevant to people today for many cultural and legal reasons.

The other problem with this paragraph is the assumption past-oriented work about an important part of United States history (Reconstruction) would be more difficult than past-oriented work about an important part of Anishinaabe history (tribal settlements before and during contact).  He seems to claim this is true because Reconstruction is part of a longer history from slavery to Jim Crow and beyond.  The statement unfortunately assumes tribal settlement patterns are a discrete and obscure part of history, not tied to a longer history of tribal peoples both before and after contact.  It seems to me Gans took the most obscure thing he could think of someone studying and used it as a (bad) example.