Marc Carpenter, “Pioneer Genocides, Settler Celebrations, and Historical Silences in 1800s Oregon”

Dr. Marc Carpenter, “Pioneer Genocides, Settler Celebrations, and Historical Silences in 1800s Oregon” 

Across the 1850s Pacific Northwest, American invaders hungry for land committed a host of atrocities, including multiple acts of genocide. Within a generation, pioneers and the historians who loved them covered up most of the crimes that had made Illahee into Oregon and Washington—but hidden evidence from the archives, Euro-American upstanders, and Native witnesses have kept enough stories alive to see the outlines of the horror. Professor Carpenter is an associate professor at the University of Jamestown in North Dakota and the author of The War on Illahee: Genocide, Complicity, and Cover-Ups in the Pioneer Northwest (Yale University Press).

This talk was part of the 2026 Oregon State University Holocaust Memorial Week Observance. For more info see https://holocaust.oregonstate.edu/