Fourth-year Ph.D. candidate Morgan Bettin-Coleman in the Department of History is reexamining the intersections of African American and Native American identities to shed light on a complex, often-ignored dimension of U.S. history.
Her dissertation, “The Native Image in the Black Mind: African American Perceptions of Native American Identity in the Long Nineteenth-Century United States,” traces how Black Americans understood and depicted Native people, and, by extension, how they understood themselves, across multiple regions, including the Southwest, Plains, Southeast and Northeast.
“I argue that Black people contributed to Indigenous stereotypes, both positive and negative,” Bettin-Coleman explained. “They came to these sentiments independently, not simply by trying to align with whiteness or white perspectives.”
Bettin-Coleman brings new voices into the historical conversation by uncovering African American perspectives in records that have long been filtered through white narratives. Her research challenges the idea that African Americans were merely passive recipients of dominant racial ideologies and instead shows them as active participants in shaping ideas about Indigeneity.
“Analyzing African American viewpoints challenges the obscurity of these voices in U.S. history,” she said. “Recognizing their diverse ideas about Indigeneity, and their impact on Native communities, helps us see these histories as interconnected rather than separate.”
Beyond its historical insight, Bettin-Coleman’s work invites a broader reflection on how scholars and the public frame historical figures.
“We often tend to cast people as wholly positive or negative,” she noted. “But that doesn’t reflect the complexity of real human beings. Understanding those nuances is essential to developing a more comprehensive view of race and identity.”
Her work underscores a central tenet of Rice's School of Humanities and Arts, challenging conventional narratives and illuminating overlooked voices to enrich our understanding of the past.