This talk asks what a bibliography of birchbark books might entail and how such research might challenge understandings of paper, print production and circulation, and readership. Dr. Wisecup takes up these questions by examining an array of birchbark books and objects that informed the making and circulation of the Potawatomi writer Simon Pokagon’s birchbark booklet titled The Red Man’s Rebuke (alt. title The Red Man’s Greeting). Thought by many scholars to be printed for the Columbian Exposition and World’s Fair in 1893, Dr. Wisecup illuminates a longer history of the booklets’ printing and circulation, including multiple editions and evidence of several readers. Dr. Wisecup asks what methods a bibliography of birchbark requires by reflecting on recent collaborative research with Pokagon Band of Potawatomi archivists and linguists. Attempting a bibliography of the birchbark booklets offers new insights on how Indigenous people acted as readers of periodicals and other printed objects as well as evidence of strategic circulation and archiving, from the nineteenth century to the present.

Presented at the BSA Annual Meeting on January 27, 2023. Sponsored by the Internet Online Booksellers Association (IOBA).