Reissued: “Intermountain Histories,” the Podcast “Writing Westward” and More: A Conversation with Brenden Rensink (S1, E9 - Part 1)

**Brad Westwood** (0:05)
Welcome to the podcast Speak Your Piece. This is a podcast about Utah's history. My name is Brad Westwood. I'm Senior Public Historian at the Utah Department of Heritage and Arts.
The past is never truly in the past. It's all around us. It informs us. It speaks to both our shared and to our separate identities. Speak Your Piece is a podcast where writers, historians, archaeologists, curators, all those who contribute to Utah's history share their insights and discoveries. When you're looking forward, planning for the future, first examine carefully the past.
This is what this podcast strives to do for the many diverse and geographically varied communities across Utah.
If there's one place, one podcast to get your Utah history fix, this is the place. Today's guest is Brenden Rensink. Hello, Brenden. How are you, friend?

**Brenden Rensink** (0:51)
I'm great. Thanks for letting me come and chat.

**Brad Westwood** (0:53)
I'm so glad you're here.
Brenden is Associate Director of the Charles Red Center for Western Studies at BYU and is Associate Professor of History at Brigham Young University. How many years has the Red Center been going? It's been such a staple in public history.

**Brenden Rensink** (1:08)
We're coming up pretty soon on our 50-year anniversary. So 2022 will be it, 50 years.

**Brad Westwood** (1:15)
He has authored an award-winning book, Native but Foreign, Indigenous Immigrants and Refugees in North American Borderlands, published in 2018 He's the author, co-author, and co-editor of multiple books and articles.
And he's the project manager and general editor for Intermountain Histories. Now this is a digital public history project, which we want to focus on a great deal today. He also is the producer of a number of podcasts. We'll also be discussing Writing Westward, Brenden's podcast that he hosts and produces.
Brenden, your award-winning book, Native but Foreign, Indigenous Immigrants and Refugees in the North American Borderlands, has received a lot of interest in the historical community. Western, Indigenous, Borderland Studies, American history in general. Give us the arc of your book. What are the main arguments? Share your highlights and maybe even a case study from your book.

**Brenden Rensink** (2:14)
So it's a comparative borderlands book that looks at the experiences of two groups of Native peoples.
One along the US-Canada border and the other along the US-Mexico border. So we're looking at both borders. And these groups were unique that they crossed into the United States, some as laborers, some as immigrants for various reasons. And then there were waves that came as political refugees seeking protection and permanent settlement in the United States. So I compare their experiences in Montana and Arizona and how they're unique because they were indigenous to these regions broadly.

**Brad Westwood** (2:50)
So before the political boundaries that we are so...

**Brenden Rensink** (2:53)
Yes, and even after the borders were established, they were crossing those borders, having a lot of experiences in what would become the United States and then in those territories and states. But as they came, they weren't categorized by the US government as American Indians. They weren't given reservations. They didn't sign treaties.
So there are these very unique groups in being, I mean, as the books title, they were native to these regions, but they were foreign Indians. So their experiences are very different than those that the US government was dealing with as American Indians.

**Brad Westwood** (3:24)
And the presumption in the past related to these tribes was what?

**Brenden Rensink** (3:28)
By the US government.
They presumed that they did not belong. They didn't belong here.

**Brad Westwood** (3:34)
So even though their pattern of life brought them in and out across a much larger landscape.

**Brenden Rensink** (3:40)
And in some early years, the US welcomed them. They were a positive economic force and we encouraged them to cross.
But as white settlement, the settler colonial state expands into these territories, there's no often no longer room for wandering landless native peoples.

**Brad Westwood** (3:57)
And so by comparing those from the south as well from the north, what are the similarities or differences and what bears out in your writing?

**Brenden Rensink** (4:06)
Yeah, strikingly, they come at very similar times 1870s, 1880s, late 19th century. They often come for very similar reasons for economics, for jobs. Later they come, as I said, as political refugees fleeing violence.
But the group Montana eventually does secure federal tribal recognition and a reservation in 1916 So after about 35 years, and these are Crees and Chippewas. But the group in Arizona, Yockeys in Arizona, they don't receive a reservation and tribal recognition until 1978, so almost 100 years. So there is this, the biggest red flag I had at first is why this discrepancy in chronology when they shared so much context and why they were in the United States.