Jeanne Eder always wanted to rewrite the history books. With her doctorate in history from Washington State University in Pullman, she becomes one of the few Indian historians to have both a doctorate and generations of stories she wants to put on paper.
Eder, 52, grew up on the Fort Peck, Assiniboine and Sioux reservation at Poplar, Mont., but graduated from high school in Billings, Mont.
She remembers reading in textbooks how her people, the “hostile Sioux” killed Lt.Col. George A. Custer at the Battle of Little Bighorn.
“You have to live with that stigma of defeating this great white hero,” Eder says. “But when I was older and could study history in depth, I realized Custer deserved what he got.”
Through her grandfather, Eder knows her great-grandmother was at the historic battle in 1876. She wrote a chapter about it in the recent anthology, “Little Bighorn Remembered.”
“I came to the realization at age 13, the Indian people had some human rights that had been violated in the history books. Indian students need to have role models and books that reflect a more positive image of Indians.”
Eder was one of 161 doctoral students to receive degrees from WSU this academic year.
As a young girl on the reservation, Eder knew she wanted to be a college professor. After earning her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in history, she taught at the University of North Dakota, Eastern Montana College, Western Montana College and Montana State University.
But in 1988, Eder decided to pursue a doctor of philosophy degree in history. The closest university with a program was WSU so, although her family remained in Montana, Eder attended the university in Pullman.
Since 1990, she commuted home every three weeks while taking classes, returning for longer stints to write her dissertation on the Indians of Yellowstone Park.
“I’m really anxious to get back to them,” she said of her husband, daughter and 2-year-old grandson.
After May 6 graduation, Eder planned to do freelance history projects, such as writing, consulting on Indian museum exhibits and performing a one-woman show about Sacajawea.
“I present her as a very tough woman who talks like the Indian women I know,” Eder says. She uses humor to relate how Sacajawea must have felt about explorers Lewis and Clark, who whined a lot and didn’t ask for directions.
She will perform the show three times in May in Montana and travel to Pennsylvania in June.
At the end of April Eder received a copy of a book for adolescents she wrote about the Dakota Sioux.
The 40-page book, composed of historical accounts, games, recipes, pictures and legends of the tribe, is part of a 16-volume series that profiles different tribes. She also wrote the volume on the Makah tribe of Washington.
Eder knows it is easy for Indians to get stalled in reaching for higher education. The expense and the feeling of isolation in the academic world can be overwhelming.
“Don’t use your Indianness as an excuse for failure,” she advises. “And find your Indian warrior inside.”
