Silencing the Indigenous Perspective in the Textbook Accounts of Norwegian Migration to America

Abstract

The historiography of Norwegian migration to North America in the 19th and early 20th centuries had, until recently, largely ignored its impact on indigenous people. Taking as a point of departure the presentations of migration to America in Norwegian lower and upper secondary school textbooks in social studies and history, this article demonstrates that the displacement of Native Americans is mostly absent in these presentations, and almost none of the textbooks discuss it in terms of settler colonialism. Such a narrative sustains the perception of North America as a sparsely inhabited continent with enough space for everyone and ultimately justifies Europeans’ right to claim possession of the land. Given that the consequences of settler colonialism continue to persist to the present day, I argue that ignoring the fact that Norwegian migrants were also settlers reproduces historical power relations and oppressive epistemologies. Aligned with the view that history education based on a single master narrative hinders critical thinking, this article contends that there is a need to decolonize the teaching of Norwegian migration to America by incorporating the perspective of Native Americans.

Keywords

• Norwegian exceptionalism
• coloniality
• settler colonialism
• migration to America
• textbook analysis
• multiperspectivity