Who's Silenced? Who's Not?

This essay juxtaposes two stories of Indigenous-settler "first contact" in the twenty-first century. One describes an event of community-based research in coastal Maine in summer 2000; the other describes an event of community-based confrontation at the Serpent Mound earthworks site in Ohio on the winter solstice 2020. The stories overlap and intersect in surprising ways, and they prompt unresolved questions about the function of "American" literary criticism at the present time: What actually happens when Indigenous voices enter the structures of the settler academy? Who benefits, and whose interests are ultimately served? Within current conventions, is it possible to center Indigenous knowledges and research agendas, to address the pressing concerns of Indigenous communities? And what does it mean to pursue scholarship ostensibly focused on aspects of Indigenous cultures within social and political contexts that continue to allow or even to promote the settler erasure of Indigenous claims–not only to distant or recent histories but to ongoing presence? Is it enough for academic institutions to assume a neutral stance on such issues? Or are "Americanist" scholars obligated to pursue more rigorous forms of disrupting settler business as usual?