By Jason Gabak
Last week, Sally Roesch Wagner executive director of the Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation joined other women for a Zoom panel discussion titled “Whose Hero? New Perspectives on Monuments in Public Landscapes.”
Wagner was joined by Jolene Rickard, associate professor in the history of art and visual studies department and affiliated faculty with the American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program at Cornell University as well as Michelle Schenandoah founder and CEO of Rematriation Magazine and Indigenous Concepts Consulting, Julia Watson landscape architect and Author of “Lo-TEK: Design by Radical Indigenism.”
Linda Norris, global programs director for International Coalition of Sites of Conscience served as facilitator.
The discussion explored a topic that has been at the forefront in recent weeks as people seek to address monuments that stand not only across the country but also around the globe, calling into question what these monuments represent and what they say about the ideals and values people hold.
“Around the world, historic monuments erected in honor of racist systems and their supporters are coming down at a speed once thought impossible,” A statement introducing the concept behind the discussion said. “What can we learn from this public reckoning and how can we ensure that new monuments are more inclusive and democratic?”
The panel sought to explore these concepts through Indigenous and feminist perspectives.
The discussion was started by Watson, who currently resides in New York, but originally hails from Australia.
Watson started by looking at one statue in particular that has been at the center of much discussion.
The statue in question depicts Theodore Roosevelt on a horse with a Native American on one side and an African American on the other.
The statue stands at the Museum of Natural History in New York City.
The museum has requested that the statue be removed and some support this move arguing that it depicts subjugation of the Native and African American people with Roosevelt above them.
In Australia, Watson said this is also an issue.
“These statures and monuments are controversial,” Watson said.
She said some monuments give a false impression of history and events across the globe.
She pointed to statues in Australia of historical figures like Captain James Cook, the first European to have recorded contact with Australia and Major General Lachlan Macquarie, the last autocratic governor of New South Wales.
She said these are controversial figures and the stories that are told of them and their influence on Australia marginalizes the native peoples and does not shed light on the ensuing efforts to colonize these lands by Europeans and thus dis-possess the Indigenous people.
Watson said when it comes to monuments the viewer and the knowledge they bring when viewing a monument play a vital role.
Rickard followed up saying that as many work to address this issue right now with the Black Lives Matter movement,, it is important to look at this issue for all Indigenous people globally.
Rickard said for the native people of the Americas prior to Columbus a great deal has been lost including sacred sites and cultural artifacts.
She pointed to a display that is part of the Smithsonian Institution, the National Museum of the American Indian that has been established to preserve pieces that are pre-Columbian, as an example of the monuments created by these people and how they differ from the idea of monuments as presented by European people.
“They are no longer here,” Rickard said. “They were eradicated between 100 and 200 after first contact.”
She said Native Americans hold the land and sites as sacred monuments and things like the seed that can be planted to grow corn are considered sacred.
Much of what was created she said was destroyed by colonizers including language and tradition like spiritual beliefs.
She also pointed to the historical markers that can be found across the state as symbols that stand as a monument to imperial colonization while overlooking the history of the native people.
For example many signs like one that stands where Cayuga Castle once was focuses on the Clinton-Sullivan campaign through what is not the Central New York region following the Revolutionary War.
According to Wagner, who spoke about Washington late, said Clinton and Sullivan were given order from Washington to clear the way for colonization.
Rickard said these markers serve as a reminder and trigger for Native Americans of the way they were dis-possessed and their monuments were desecrated.
Wagner said she originally comes from South Dakota and focused on one of the most iconic monuments in America, Mount Rushmore.
“Why these four guys,” Wagner asked.
She said the popular myth is that at least Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln are viewed as playing vital roles in the creation of the United States.
But she said looking at their stories from the perspective of Native Americans and African Americans, this sheds a new light on these figures.
“It is a monument to imperialism and colonization,” Wagner said.
Wagner pointed to Washington’s order, giving land to those who served in the Revolutionary War without regard to the native people.
She also said Jefferson and the Louisiana Purchase is looked at a growth of American from one perspective, but from a native perspective, this was also a loss of land and heritage.
“Lincoln, he freed the slaves, but Harriet Tubman called him the Pontius Pilate of the slaves,” Wagner said.
She pointed to historical records that Lincoln initially was focused on preserving the Union during the Civil War and was some what ambivalent on the issue of slavery.
She pointed to Roosevelt as being imperialist in acquiring lands beyond the continental border, thus expanding the America without regard for the native people of these territories.
While there are no easy answers to these issues, the panel members said putting these monuments into historical context and exploring the stories more completely, beyond the some what mythological version often presented, can help shed light on their place and meaning and help people consider what deserves to be a monument and what should perhaps be relegated to history.
Wagner pointed specifically to many monuments, such as Confederate monuments, but including others, that were erected in the 1920s and 1930s as having a troubling history.
Wagner said many coincided with the rise of Ku Klux Klan that targeted Black people as well as Native Americans and Christians.
She said these monuments have a lasting impact in that for many people they perpetuate a message of subjugation and oppression that according to Wagner that American Psychological Association characterizes as having an affect on mental health with lasting ramifications.
In regard to those who have torn some of these monuments down of their own volition, Wagner said that while this kind of action is a last resort, there is a context in which it is at least understandable where the impetus stems from.
She said in many cases people have tried for years to discuss these troubling monuments with leaders and after years of inaction, Wagner said it might at least be understandable where these action of defacing or tearing down monuments are coming from.
