The systematic exclusion of women and Indigenous people from historical narratives did not mean that they were not there, not contributing, not doing remarkable things.

It meant that the people doing the recording did not look for or preserve what they were doing.

The recovery of their stories is the correction of a historical record that was incomplete and distorted by the perspective of those who created it.

The specific tools that allow the recovery — the oral traditions preserved within communities, the work of historians willing to take those traditions seriously, the growing scholarly attention to Indigenous history — are what make it possible to say: she was there, she did these things, she was this kind of person, and history almost forgot her.

History almost forgot her.