NaBloPoMo: Oneida
November 13, 2009emily No Comments »So I’ve been researching the Oneida community for my dissertation and WOW, was that some weird shit! I mean, I know as historians we’re trained to be impartial and to not make value judgments, but WHOA. WHOA is what I have to say about that. I’m currently reading My Father’s House: An Oneida Boyhood at the same time that I’m reading Desire and Duty at Oneida: Tirzah Miller’s Intimate Memoir. As the titles might suggest, they represent two very different perspectives of the Oneida experience (one being childlike and innocent and the other being more… uh… experienced and graphic). I’m always telling my students that people in the past were really very different from us. Contrary to what The Flintstones or even The Patriot would have us believe, they weren’t just like us only in different clothing. Therefore, we need to take them on their own terms. We won’t always be able to understand or come to grips with the things they did. And rather than bore you with the details of my research, I’ll just say that I’m having a bit of a hard time doing that with the Oneida folks. Interesting reading, for sure, but hard to bend my mind around.
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