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Chris Finley
Ethnic Studies

Shari Huhndorf, Mentor

Indigeneity in the Early Slave Narrative

To date, leading critics of the slave narrative genre, including Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and William L. Andrews, have disregarded a significant part of early slaves' identities and histories by overlooking their indigeneity. Nevertheless, early authors of the slave narratives explicitly discuss their indigenous identities and the colonial processes of dispossession and removal in their narratives. I will analyze an early slave narrative, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, The African (1789) to examine how a consideration of that slave’s indigeneity transforms our interpretations of the text. Viewing African slaves in part as displaced indigenous people reveals fundamental similarities between black and indigenous people located in this country, now called the United States, based on shared histories of forced removal, genocide, and other forms of colonialism. These similarities could, in turn, provide the foundation for political coalitions between black and indigenous communities to fight ongoing ideologies and practices of racism.