A book by Rose Miron, Vice President for Research and Education at the Newberry, has been selected by the National Council on Public History (NCPH) as the recipient of their 2025 Book Award. The NCPH, founded in 1980, is a membership association dedicated to making the past useful in the present and to encouraging collaboration between historians and their publics. Its work begins in the belief that historical understanding is of essential value in society.
Miron’s scholarship takes readers into the heart of debates over who owns and has the right to tell Native American history and stories. For centuries, non-Native collectors and institutions have gathered Indigenous objects and archival materials, and Indigenous nations have had little to no control over how these materials are presented and accessed. Indigenous Archival Activism: Mohican Interventions in Public History & Memory, published in April 2024 by University of Minnesota Press, tells the story of one tribe's efforts to recover their scattered historical materials and rewrite their history.
According to the NCPH, the Book Award honors work that “display[s] the public aspects of their conception, development, and execution, and how they illuminate issues and concerns significant to audiences beyond the academy.” Miron’s book, Indigenous Archival Activism, is recognized as the “best book about or growing out of public history published within the previous two calendar years (2023 and 2024).”
Of her work, Rose says, “It was an honor to partner with the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican Nation to tell this story. I hope the book emphasizes the importance of community engagement and shared authority with Indigenous nations, across both academia and the public humanities.”
The NCPH Book Award consists of a $1,000 cash prize and a certificate, which will be presented at the NCPH Annual Meeting in Montréal, Québec, Canada this year.
Indigenous Archival Activism is available for purchase in the Newberry Bookshop.
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