ABSTRACT
The migration of Nordic immigrants to North America and the displacement of indigenous peoples intersect historically and geographically, yet migration historians mostly avoid the intersections. Norwegian immigrants, considered the most rural of immigrant groups, settled primarily on land (and in rural areas) in the Upper Midwest. Thus, the dispossession of indigenous land and displacement of indigenous peoples, resulting from federal land and Indian policies, made possible the land possession of Nordic immigrants. In effect, Norwegian immigrants benefitted from what Charles W. Mills describes as the racial contract, an unwritten contract establishing a racial order in which perceived whites give consent (tacit or explicit) to misconstruing the world in exchange for benefits—economic, social, and cultural. Mills proposes this constitutes whiteness. Drawing on the theory of the racial contract and incorporating empirical evidence surrounding federal Indian and land policy, this chapter examines how the racial contract worked to benefit Norwegian immigrants (presumably with tacit consent) and to grievously injure indigenous people through dispossession and displacement.
