Shall We Repeat Indian History in Alaska?, (23 January 1947) Philadelphia, PA

“Shall We Repeat Indian History in Alaska?” delivered January 23, 1947, Bronson, Ruth Muskrat. (1897-1982)

The text of Ruth Muskrat Bronson’s (=A) speech was published in volume 24, issue 1, of Indian Truth in 1947. The Historical Society of Pennsylvania provides access to Indian Truth through the Indian Rights Association papers. This speech is located in the Indian Rights Association Records, Collection 1523, Series III: Printed Matter 1830-1987, Indian Truth (1943-1948), Box 328, Folder 6, from The Historical Society of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

Another version of this speech (=B) was published in Ruth Muskrat Bronson, ‘“Shall We Repeat Indian History in Alaska?’: Speech to the Annual Meeting of the Indian Rights Association, January 23, 1947,” in Great Documents in American Indian History, eds. Wayne Moquin and Charles Van Doren (New York: Praeger, 1973), 319-325. Copy-text =B was used to fill in a word (“to”), which was missing in copy-text =A, as noted below.

We could not locate any other versions of this speech and there do not appear to be any audio or video recordings of Bronson’s address.

The speech from the Indian Truth (=A) was recovered by Andrew Williams, Digital Services Archivist at The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and was transcribed by Maya C. Thompson. Paragraph structure, headings, spelling, italics, capitalization, and punctuation of the document have been retained from copy-text =A. Paragraph numbers were added in brackets. We did fix two instances where a word was missing from the sentence when the error was obvious. The number corresponds to the speech paragraph where the error occurred:

1: “do not pretend have” became “do not pretend to have”

13: “Department of the Interior [to] protect” B: “Department of the Interior protect” A

Maya C. Thompson and Skye de Saint Felix have proofread this speech text for accuracy.