Rethinking Revolutionary New York: A Conversation about Haudenosaunee Histories and the Sullivan Campaign - WEBINAR

The Sullivan-Clinton Campaign is the Revolutionary War event most overtly commemorated in New York, with over 250 historical signs and markers -- and yet, the history told on the markers is misleading in many ways. In our conversation, we contrast this account with Haudenosaunee perspectives on the event and on the Revolutionary War more generally. The upcoming anniversary of the Revolutionary War offers a powerful opportunity to introduce varied experiences during the war as well as the wide range of positions held by different people today. By reading against the grain, by offering an unexpected use of existing sources, and by considering yet-untapped resources, we can develop a richer and more complex reading of this military expedition and other pasts. Moving beyond the Sullivan campaign, we ask how we can begin to understand and interpret indigenous history and consider why some people feel unprepared.

Alyssa Mt. Pleasant is a scholar whose research focuses on Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) history during the Revolutionary War era. Her publications include the co-authored article “Materials and Methods in Native American and Indigenous Studies: Completing the Turn” and “Independence for Whom?: Expansion and Conflict in the Northeast and Northwest.” Mt. Pleasant holds a PhD in History from Cornell University and has been a faculty member in History, American Studies, and interdisciplinary Ethnic Studies departments at Yale University and the University at Buffalo (SUNY). She served as founding Program Director of the Native American Scholars Initiative at the American Philosophical Society, connecting campus and community-based researchers with archival collections. A descendant of the Tuscarora and Seneca Nations through her father’s lineage, she has dedicated much of her scholarly career to service with and for Native youth in college and university settings. In 2024 she was elected to membership in the American Antiquarian Society.

Andrea Lynn Smith is a professor of anthropology at Lafayette College, Easton, PA who researches collective memory and settler colonialism. Her most recent book, Memory Wars: Settlers and Natives Remember Washington’s Sullivan Expedition of 1779 (2023), considers the public memory of a Revolutionary War expedition. Previous books include works on settler memory in French colonial Algeria (2006), and Rebuilding Shattered Worlds: Creating Community by Voicing the Past (2016).