Angie Debo: Pioneering Historian (review)

At an early date, historian Angie Debo (1890-1982) wrote about American Indians from a unique perspective—placing their viewpoints and dynamic cultures, not the dominant Anglo narrative, at the center of her projects. Shirley Leckie's work (number 18 in the Oklahoma Western Biographies Series), the first book-length biography of Debo, discusses both her professional and personal life in depth.

The book begins with a chronicle of Debo's youth. The daughter of homesteaders, Debo was raised near Marshall, Oklahoma. After several stints of public school teaching, Debo received degrees from the University of Oklahoma (OU) and the University of Chicago. She then taught history at West Texas State Teachers College and returned to OU to complete her Ph.D. under the western historian Edward Everett Dale.

With the encouragement of Dale, Debo began addressing American Indian issues. Her dissertation (later published as The Rise and Fall of the Choctaw Republic) investigated the impact of termination and allotment on the Choctaw. Although an academic appointment eluded Debo, she began an intense period of research that witnessed the publication of And Still the Waters Run: The Betrayal of the Five Civilized Tribes, The Road to Disappearance: A History of the Creek Indians, A History of the Indians of the United States, and Prairie City: The Story of an American Community.

These works were noted for Debo's often controversial interpretations of history. In part, Debo viewed Anglo-Indian relations in a colonial and imperial context instead of relying on the more common interpretations that emphasized the settlement and civilization of the West by Euro-Americans. The environmental and cultural adaptations resulting from Indian dispossession and relocation also received attention in most of Debo's ethnographic work. Debo spared no one in her research, implicating significant state and national leaders in their attempts to cheat and defraud Oklahoma's Native population. In these chapters discussing Debo's work—the bulk of the book—Leckie does an excellent job of summarizing Debo's research and its contributions to history and other humanities. Leckie also underscores the financial and emotional stresses Debo experienced while researching but not holding an academic position.

The final segment of Debo's life was characterized by reduced teaching and writing and increased activism. Although she published Geronimo: The Man, His Time, His Place late in life, Debo's focus was on aiding American Indian communities to achieve justice and equality through the political process. Her activities with the American Civil Liberties Union and other personal lobbying efforts aided the fights against tribal termination and the Alaskan Native claims issue, among others.

One fault of the work is the lack of notes. To be fair, the Oklahoma Western Biographies Series prohibits citations, and Leckie attempted to correct this shortcoming by including an extensive bibliographic essay. However, this editorial policy dramatically reduces the usefulness of the text to those wishing to investigate a theme or idea of the work in further depth.

While the book provides a balanced assessment of Debo's life and career, the biography is slightly sanitized and conservative. In particular, Debo's ongoing conflicts, debates, and frustrations with the University of Oklahoma Press, the university's history department, and her advisor Dale are glossed over. One wishes that a little more of the controversy surrounding Debo had been brought to the forefront and interpreted by Leckie.

These small shortcomings aside, Angie Debo: Pioneering Historian provides an interesting look at one of the leading scholars of Oklahoma and Native America. In addition to aiding an understanding of the life and research of Debo, the work should provide valuable seminar discussions on diverse topics such as advisor-advisee relationships, the role of gender in academia, activism among American Indian scholars, and the balance (or lack thereof) between teaching and research at institutions of higher education.