In-Migrations, Out-Migrations, Reparations, and Repatriations: Lessons from the American Confluence

The migrations in and out of what became the state of Missouri from roughly the 1730s through the 1830s and the relations between migrants from different parts of North America, Europe, and Africa within what Aron has called the “American Confluence” are principal concerns of his 2006 book bearing that title. This presentation returns to that historical ground to extract lessons we might take from the variety of relations between peoples and from the complications these raise for how we frame studies of “settler colonialism.” Important as this past is, this presentation is also about the present, for the expulsion of Indians from Missouri in the first third of the nineteenth century remains a matter for twenty-first-century public policy. The history now inserts itself into discussions about reparations, especially as these inspire “land back” movements. And in his current position as the director of a museum with one of the foremost collections of Native American art and artifacts, it presses a different kind of reparations in the form of repatriations that will diminish the holdings of museums and, of more significance, alter the relations between museums and Indigenous communities.