The classroom teaching of the Lewis and Clark expedition, of western expansion, of the fur trade — these are the contexts in which Marie Dorion’s story has not been consistently included as a primary subject.

Including it requires treating her experience as central rather than supplementary: not as “an interesting example of Indigenous women’s contribution to the fur trade” but as a story of individual achievement that deserves the same kind of sustained attention that the journeys of Wilson Price Hunt and Gabriel Franchère and Washington Irving’s romanticized Astorians have received.

The facts support that treatment.

The recovery is ongoing.