Humanities of the Palouse hosted an event at the Moscow City Hall Sunday about Idaho’s dark history and how it relates to contemporary issues.
Latah County Historic Society Executive director Dulce Kersting spoke as a guest speaker.
“It’s kind of a weird state,” Kersting said. “Outside of Alaska, (Idaho) has the most acres held in federal public lands … and yet Idahoans have this intense hatred of the federal government.”
Another inconsistency is that Idaho has provided a 30-year haven for the Arian nations, Kersting said, and the state is ranked sixth most Caucasian in the nation. She said people often have to research the history behind this to find the cause.
Idaho is perceived as the “leftovers” of the Western states, Kersting said. Whatever was not taken was clumped into the region. Moreover, Idaho Native Americans were mistreated by the federal government during the 19th century partly through Marshall Trilogy treaties, she said.
“They were called ‘treaties,’ but it forfeited all rights to autonomy for tribes,” Kersting said.
These treaties’ fine print did not grant Native Americans access to land, but the federal government was not allowed to take land away from them, she said. The federal government deceptively took ownership of the local regions and promised to never remove the tribes from the territory.
“It was a very backwards sort of situation,” Kersting said. “Those rights to autonomy would not be restored until the middle of the 20th century.”
Many immigrants have passed through Idaho, she said, notably Chinese immigrants to work in mines.
Along the Salmon River, there are traces of abandoned mines, said Adam Seubert, a Schweitzer Engineering employee.
“They have, like, stone huts that the miners lived in,” Seubert said. “And from my understanding, they were predominately Chinese.”
Early on in Idaho’s history, only 53 African Americans lived in the state, Kersting said.
“When your numbers are so low, you pose no threat to the greater white majority, because there’s no fear that you are going to collectivize and demand more rights,” Kersting said.
This lack of diversity was greatly due to limited economic investment in Idaho and narrow opportunities for workers, Kersting said. Overall, it was outside investors that kept Idaho afloat, she said.
“The timber industry flourished because of outside investment,” Kersting said
As Idaho’s lucrative profit increased, environmental impact rose causing deforestation, water contamination and fluctuations in animal populations, she said. Historically, early Idahoan residents did not condone federal level forming public lands — a point-of-view many conservatives hold today.
“(To them), there’s no such thing as ‘common land’ — you have to own it,” Kersting said. “We see this later on with public lands. We have a real problem with the idea that nobody owns the land.”
Catherine Keenan can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @Ckeeneye