I think A Misplaced Massacre is one of those books that we could spend a month examining and debating. In many ways, Kelman’s efforts constitute a tour de force—this is a great piece of literature, rife with perfectly placed/articulated metaphors in the chapter titles and the body of the text; his overall narrative flow is wonderful; and the range and depth of sources present in the footnotes is commendable. In others, his shortcomings are quite pronounced—I am thoroughly confused by Kelman’s belief that he does “not appear as a character in these pages” (x) as, for me, his character was omnipresent; there isn’t enough ink dedicated to the history of legislating the memorialization process in the U.S.; we aren’t given a satisfactory explanation for why Native oral history is absent. What I attempt to do in this blog post is consider Kelman’s attempt to weave overlapping, often competing narratives alongside a host of overarching, but sometimes subtle themes, including authority/authorship, narrative, memory, and audience.
At the heart of A Misplaced Massacre are contestations of memory. It becomes clear throughout the text that memory and memorialization are layered processes—they are acts that reflect not just individual and collective identity, but also sovereignty. This is true both of the ‘American’ and the ‘Indian’ viewpoint in Colorado. The ability to remember/memorialize is intricately linked to political autonomy and cultural authority. In Kelman’s telling, the National Parks Service initially took this linkage for granted; this might be unsurprising given the NPS’s relative position of authority. The Cheyennes and Arapahos who view(ed) Sand Creek as more than just a historical event—as “an emotionally and psychologically present event” (109)—understood and made clear their understanding that this linkage was central to the memorialization process. Yet despite these actors’ eventual ability to forge a working relationship, perhaps the most significant conclusion of this book is one of failure. Of course, the competing claims to authorship and meaning in the making of the Sand Creek National Historic Site could never have been fully satisfied. We can clearly see that neither the NPS team members nor the Native voices (especially) were comfortable with the resolution. The NPS team hoped that the Site would represent its “commitment to pluralism and incorporating Native voices into the national narrative the agency constructs,” as well as “a template for future cooperation between federal authorities and Indian peoples” and “a way to satisfy a select group of influential politicians who wanted the massacre memorialized.” (85-86) They were successful in at least one of their aims. The Cheyenne/Arapaho descendants were more immediately concerned with promoting “healing within their tribes,” realizing the reparations claims of the Little Arkansas Treaty, and “maintaining cultural and political sovereignty throughout the painful memorialization process.” (86) They were successful, to some degree, in two of their aims. Kelman, moreover, is cognizant of these failures. By returning to the ‘landscape’ metaphor in his conclusion, Kelman offers a suggestion for those confronting the shortcomings of this memorialization process: “NPS officials and the descendants…might agree that the historic site should challenge visitors to grapple with competing narratives of U.S. history, to struggle with ironies embedded in the American past. If that happens, then perhaps the massacre will no longer be misplaced in the landscape of national memory.” (279) On first reading, this struck me as a weak conclusion because it seemed so open-ended. But after some reflection I think I can appreciate Kelman’s sentiment here. Alongside those themes of authority/authorship, narrative, and memory that run throughout A Misplaced Massacre, Kelman is asking us (i.e., academic historians) to seriously consider our audience. Audience is a crucial element throughout the text—the political actors are constantly mindful (and reminded) of their respective audiences as they conduct their work. This conclusion is Kelman’s way of letting us know that we too have be mindful (and reminded) of our audience. I think that, in this way, A Misplaced Massacre takes on a new level of significance. Its willingness to engage public history (and all the issues of politics and authority that come with it) is what stands out most for me.
Firstly, this book is remarkably well written. It reads like a long piece of investigative journalism complete with plot twists, cliff-hangers etc. It’s brilliant.
I find myself asking similar questions to Connor about Kelman’s own position in the text, though. The book is unusual in laying bare many of the uncertainties or indeterminacies that often shroud historical sources that derive from traumatic events, and for grappling really concretely with the process of producing and contesting public history. At root, this is really Kelman’s purpose in writing it the book (x). And yet that kind of methodological forthrightness makes his own absence in the text all the more glaring. The pronoun “I,” for example, only appears in quotations. Kelman explains this decision in the preface by saying that the story “is not in any meaningful way mine, and the people who can legitimately claim it as their own are far more interesting than I am” (x). And yet if the book is about “the collision of history and memory” and he’s gone so far as to write a history book on the subject, how can he really say that he’s not part of the story? He seems to be as much a part of it as the NPS.
I think there are methodological points to be made here about authorship and scepticism towards one’s own judgment etc., but one of the things this raises for me is ownership of the past. One of the things that is perhaps underlining Kelman’s position is a particular notion of the possession or ownership of history, that is, the idea that the history of Sand Creek belongs in some sense to others. This seems to be a subject that only arises when we talk about trauma and its legacies, in this case through a particularly brutal moment in the history of American settler colonialism. It’s also a subject that obviously has application to historical artefacts—everything from bullets to pins to bodies—and efforts at their repatriation. But what about the “story”? I guess my question in this regard is simple: who, if anyone, owns the story of the Sand Creek Massacre? And how should that shape history writing?
Memory of a Massacre is a poignant example of the “history wars” that have become major political theatres in many contemporary societies. As the author states in the first chapter, conflicts over what “really” happened, and who somebody or some group “really” was/were reflect contemporary political interests, and often, as they book demonstrates, a myriad of other forces: private and community/regional financial interests, the highly specific interests and personalities of individual stakeholders, and of course, the desire for a sense of justice, recognition, respect, dignity on behalf of victims, families of victims, descendants of victims.
What the specific example examined in this book illustrates is how these battles are shaped by realities of power and voice. Because the Cheyenne and Arapaho communities of north-eastern Colorado are a colonized people lacking the geo-political or economic power to decide this question themselves, they were not only faced with reaching consensus among themselves, but also with various levels and arms of the United States government, as well as local, property-owning white Americans and other outside lobbies. In other words, their denial of sovereignty generally also meant a denial of sovereignty in the decision making process of how the Sandcreek Massacre should be remembered.
The book also raises the question: can a society embrace the ugly episodes of its past without glorifying them, can it confront this ugliness without condemning it? This is an especially important question given the common argument that a nation needs its myths and heroes in order to foster a sense of identity, pride, unity, etc. Recently in Canada there was some controversy over the 200th birthday of Sir John A McDonald, who was both “the father of Confederation” (as the standard Canadian history books say) and a very, very bad man (in my humble of opinion). I personally feel that we don’t need to tear down the statues of such people, and we can retain them as “national historical figures” while also frankly acknowledging the oppression and injustice they were responsible for; while also renewing and elaborating such “official histories” by working to celebrate the many great men and women left out of the history textbooks. But of course this is no easy task.
Initially I was looking forward to reading a piece of history, identifiable as such by its method, author’s position as an academic historian, and subject matter. The latter in particular intrigued me. I have noticed in the Canadian context, historians find it difficult to write about Indigenous history and tell more than the one dominant narrative, even when other stories would complicate, enrich, and provoke present attitudes and understandings (put differently, I think nuanced and even competing narratives are important and do not necessarily preclude one from acknowledging the injustices of the past). Kelman’s approach gave me hope at the onset: three massacre stories were introduced, one from a perpetrator, one from a witness, and one from a victim, with competing cartographies, and I anticipated the telling was going to be complicated and challenge simplistic understandings about the past (especially with opening comments about the “palliative” nature of memorials). As I read, however, I discovered that the level of detail that Kelman is willing to include in his narrative threatens to obscure the story’s significance.
Needless to say, Kelman’s zeal for storytelling left me uncertain. On the one hand, his creative descriptions of characters and settings brings his story to life and offers the reader a sense of the way things happened, as if they were present: “A gripping narrator, Halaas spoke with swinging rhythms, built characters like a novelist, and wove telling detail into his stories” (109; Kelman could be writing about himself). But on the other hand, how would Colleen and Laird Cometsevah (among others) feel when they read his description of them in the text (155)? For the first couple of chapters, A Misplaced Massacre reads like a novel, as Kelman carefully unfolds the narrative without resolving the conflict too quickly. By the end of chapter three, however, the story has been told. What follows is perhaps an attempt to highlight cultural differences or the many perspectives of his characters, but I am not sure. In chapter three he quotes Mildred Red Cherries, “Indian people don’t walk away from someone until we’re done talking. We don’t leave a relative or a friend just to be on time” (107) and then speculates on the perspectives of NPS officials to highlight clashes in cultural perspectives on time and respect. Is his lengthy interest in Dawson and the Bowens, or his inclusion of Internet debate about memorializing the massacre, an attempt to portray varying perspectives on American history, e.g. “they’re always victims” (225)?
By the time 9/11 was introduced he had lost me (189). Although in retrospect I can admit that this is perhaps a useful American analogy for viewing military history and Indigenous people, read from a Canadian perspective steeped in the recent Truth and Reconciliation Commission, it makes parochial what is otherwise an international issue (colonization and Indigenous peoples). I was disappointed that resolution, to an extent, came with a theory that the stream had shifted course, rather than a discussion that involves the topic the “United States…as an exceptional nation among nations” (279), which Kelman is not certain visitors to the Sand Creek site are ready to broach.
A contemporary analogy to this work stayed in the back of my mind during most of Kelman’s narrative. In 2011 in Lethbridge a large stone was taken which sat outside the replica of the fort that once existed. The speculation was that the person who had taken it wanted it as a decorative piece, as it was a seemingly unclaimed 700 pound stone, and could make an attractive ornament to a lawn. The stone, however, was a Blackfoot artifact, known as the Medicine Stone, and as site of spiritual significance. While there was a sign stating this nearby, it was not obvious this stone had a history beyond the present; an average passerby would merely see an apolitical stone. After the media condemned the stealing it was eventually returned in the middle of the night, in a different position from where it originally sat. The city worked together with Blackfoot elders to reorient the stone, and a ceremony was held. After that, the Medicine Stone had a fence placed around it by the city and a new, larger plaque commemorating the Blackfoot story. The way this story was told always bothered me. It was portrayed as a town getting together to right a wrong and help the Blackfoot population protect a heritage. I feel as though this narrative placed a white settler colonial narrative as existing above the Blackfoot narrative. The site was only legitimized when a fence and plaque were placed around it, and the stone was an acceptable monument to Indigenous heritage. The memory of the rock was reshaped by a narrative of white redemption and protection. The plaque makes no mention of the stealing of the rock. I think that one of the major importances of Kelman’s work drifting between past and present is to show that neither narrative can exist on their own and that a history is as political as that present. Ignoring either aspect misses the story. The Medicine Stone was misplaced (both literally and figuratively), and the narrative born from its monuentalization was one of a white town rescuing indigenous history, while the white town and the indigenous history were kept very much apart.
I loved the discussion of geography at the end! I think it destabilizes the very foundations which much of historical knowledge rests on. I also admired the structure, where each chapter seemed to start in a present and begin blurring and diving into the past. Kelman proves how important history is, and how powerful History can be. I think it is the interplay between [h]istory and [H]istory Kelman highlights that makes his work so brilliant.
While I really did like this work, I had a question that I was not sure the answer to. Is the study of memory and monuments relatively new, or have historians adopted it late? I have read older sociological work that seems similar to Kelman. Have historians addressed these ideas before?
To read this book was a bit weird for me: At the beginning I was impressed by Kelman’s style of writing and both topics and purpose are interesting. But the more I read I became more and more annoyed by Kelman’s style. To put it in a nutshell, at this point I disagree with Conor and Devin. Sure, this book has some literary value and in some ways it is impressive how Kelman weaves different storylines together and uses cliff-hangers. But for two reasons I dislike this: First, it makes it difficult to work with this book, be it for reconstructing his argumentation(s) or for rediscovering details. Several times in this book I thought that this specific story would have been better placed in a footnote. Second, I didn’t feel to be taken seriously as a reader. Especially Kelman’s habit of using flashbacks caused this feeling: Several times in this book he purported that this and that problem has been solved – for example the approval of the congress. But later in the book Kelman surprises everybody with the “news” that the problem was not yet solved entirely. This seem to me like a cheap trick to gain the reader’s attention and it also makes it impossible for me to think about explanations of or solutions for a problem since I can never be sure if Kelman has not withheld important information from me.
However, the topic (politics of remembrance) is interesting and the story of establishing this memorial site shows the variety of possible obstacles: The question of the place (I knew that the Battle of Teutoburger Forest has not been located, but this is almost 2000 years old and I had not assumed that it is so difficult to detect such a recent event), the very heterogeneous and multifaceted interests of locals, the NPS and descendants plus some reactionaries and ultimately the interpretation of the whole event and it’s presentation. Still I think that it would have been useful to structure the book in a more old-fashioned way (probably including some background-information about memorial sites in general, the NPS and the Cheyenne/Arapaho-US-relationship) in order to present this complexity in an understandable way.
My comments this week have a lot to do with the questions Moe already brought up in his post. While there is a lot more going on in the book, much of A Misplaced Massacre is devoted to examining how the tension between different narratives of the past figures into the creation of national monuments. Whenever a government agency designates a historical monument, they are, sometimes quite literally, fixing a narrative of the past into stone. In his book, Kelman examines the different ways in which the process of fixing such a narrative can be used. Two of the most obvious uses are to establish national myths which can be used to encourage certain cultural values and as an attempt at reconciliation with groups who have been wronged in the past.
It is clear that Kelman is opposed to or at least extremely skeptical about these two particular uses of fixed narratives from the way he characterises news articles that invoke these tropes throughout his piece. Despite this, Kelman does not directly challenge the creation of such narratives. At the end of his conclusion he even in some sense endorses them, noting that the Sand Creek site will complicate many visitors’ views of the Civil War in a positive way. I imagine his conclusion would have been much different if Jerry Russell and the other “Sand Creek was a Battle” people had been allowed to control the narrative at the Civil War Memorial and the Sand Creek site. While it seems unlikely that such a narrative could win out in the current political climate, times do change. That leads me to my questions for this week:
Should history be used to create national myths? There seem to be cases where this use of history can have both positive and negative consequences.
Is there a way to do public history that allows for multiple narratives which is both easily digestible and provides a more nuanced account of historical events?
A very important point which this book brought out for me was the issue of how to fracture the metanarrative of the nation state. In particular it problematizes the difficult process of memorialization as a strategy for healing and unity, when there are divergent voices and unresolved issues. Kelman does a very good job of bringing the divergent voices and the ideas which inform them into focus and then contrasting them (Federal, native, local etc.…). However, I remain somewhat skeptical as to whether or not Kelman actually is able to write a history that itself operates outside the nationalist metanarrative. To Kelman himself “it remains unclear where the massacre fits into the national narrative. “(278) I think that the problem with what Kelman is trying to do is thinking that this has to be shoehorned into the American narrative. Divergent voices or not, Kelman is still conceiving of this incident as the history of the American nation. The Cheyenne, importantly, state in the book that they are not so much concerned with becoming or being American as they are with preserving and living out their own culture. However, the whole process of memorialization reveals that even when untidy, dissenting histories and explanations are still institutionally bounded (here the NPS, state, and municipality) by the nation. I find this interesting. If one were to write a history of the Cheyenne and Arapaho people before and after their encounter with Europeans, would this change the way that the history of the Sand Creek Massacre would be written? Would the telos of incorporation in the American nation still structure the history of that people? Why should one see this as an essentially U.S. History?
Second, Kelman claims “I do not appear as a character in these pages” and the story “is not in any meaningful way mine” (x). I very much disagree with this. Kelman in selecting and framing how the memorialization process was undertaken is making himself an actor in this exercise of public memory. The incident where he recalls the different reactions between the native observers and the scientists who discover human remains on a farm near the site is a case in point. The scientists are elated, while the Native American observers withdraw upset. Kelman’s framing is very evocative and raises, certainly intentionally, emotional responses that make the reader feel the scientists and their reaction was inappropriate, while privileging and validating the Cheyenne observers’ response (129). I do not fault Kelman for the particular description, nor the reaction the reader would surely have, but I do not feel that he is being honest about his role. Can the historian ever extricate oneself from being an actor in one’s own work? Even the most detached magisterial work, such the work Braudel did on the Mediterranean, with a voice that is far removed from a connection with the subject casts an authorial shadow that is just as active and influential in its non-recognition as it would have been in its recognition.
There are many things that I really appreciated about this book. Aside from how incredibly well written and compelling it is, it engages several very important issues and ideas pertinent to historians (and, I would hope, the general public) in an in depth and meaningful way.
The first that I would note is – one that reverberates through the whole work – the value of telling ‘your own’ story. The story of the book is the story of people fighting for their RIGHT to tell their own story. Last week we looked at several biographies, autobiographies and life histories – notably Written As I Remember It, which deals with, among other things, the memory of traumatic events and the importance of being able to voice that experience. There is an urgent sense in Kelman’s work of just how meaningful the act of storytelling is, not just politically (which is a very big concern), but also on the individual level, and how powerful the act of honouring your or your ancestors’ experience is.
Secondly, the book raises the issue of violence, and how we not only write about violence, but how we think about violence. The question at the forefront of the debates surrounding the creation of the Sand Creek site is, of course, the question of whether or not it should be labelled a massacre or a battle. This raises really important questions for historians because these labels are seemingly so subjective, but also carry so much weight and real-world consequences. But he also stresses that we can appreciate not only physical violence, but also historical violence through silencing stories that ‘don’t fit’.
And lastly, I was really struck by Kelman’s discussion and analysis of the “shifting creek bed” and his questioning of “the landscape’s apparent utility as a commemorative canvas, a vehicle for the lessons of the past into the present and the future?” (278) Envisioning memory like a landscape, and acknowledging how even landscapes change over time is a very powerful idea for me. It strikes directly at our interconnectivity with our lived environments, and also at the unstable nature of everything (history/memory/ourselves/geographies/nations/etc.)
Ari Kelman’s A Misplaced Massacre is a very beautiful narrative about narratives and histories rather than about the story of the sand creek per se.
Kelman opens the book by the story of the Sand Creek massacre, although the massacre itself is not the subject of the book. I would argue, the author denies that there exist “the story” of the massacre. For Kelman, it is clear that his aim of analyzing these very different perspectives is to provide the public the method of how history is made. He shows the complicated process of making history by first introducing three different characters of that time: John Chivington, Silas Soule, and George Bent, two perpetrators and one survivor of the massacre. They have very different perspectives about the massacre, for Chivington it was a battle against hostile foes, and for Soule and Bent, it was an inhumane massacre. He argues that during Chivington’s time, it was the Amercian expansionism version that prevailed. However, as time passed by, the offical version of the history cannot pinpoint the actual site of the massacre, and they have lost touch with the descendants of the Sand Creek’s victims. So along the way of trying to build the historical monument, the author explores different perspectives along the way and different motives behind the scene. As for the indian tribes representatives, their motivation of helping the building of the historical site lies in their motive of pursing reparations that had heen promised but not fulfilled. William Dawson, a rancher who claims he owns Sand Creek, did so because he wants to gain profit from this process besides his friendship with the tribe representatives. Other people also claim that their property as being other possible sites for the massacre. Moreover, locals became concerned about the effect a federal memorial will have on their own property rights and whether tourism will change their living enviornment. Moreover, at the opening ceremony of the Historical Site, Kelma argues that different people have very different motivations behind it. For many politicians, this Historical site is a way of reconciliation with the violent past and for others, this is a the starting point of forming a new narrative against the previous one: the refusal to reconciliate so easily. Among those very different and complicated perspectives about the story, Kelman illustrates the complexity of history itself, and that history is shaped and still shaping by different political, ecnomic and cultural interests as well as ideas, stories and memories.
Kelman concludes that “the story of memorializing Sand Creek suggests that history and memory are malleable, that even the land, despite its implied promise of permanence, can change, and that people of the United States are so various that they should not be expected to share a single tale of a common past” (279). I think for Kelman himself, he refuses to reconcile so easily with the past, rather, he predicts that different perspectives about this history will continue to appear and to shape and to be shaped by the narrative itself.
Also, if I have a question about it, it would be like Conor’s and many others’ about the author’s claim that he does not appear as a character in these pages. He defintely is and he cannot escape it. So I wonder what other people would think about that.
In lieu of a thoughtful analysis about the political contestation of malleable memories (a few of you have already treated this better here than I could do) or an account on the futility of attempting to redeem the ghosts of a past injustice (I exhausted my best thoughts on that topic three or so weeks ago), I want to compare A Misplaced Massacre to some of our prior readings with the aim of probing how stories of that sort can be written.
The single aspect I have in mind is Kelman’s intention to pull back as a character in the book – to “not appear”, as he writes, in the narrative (x). I don’t imagine he wants us to take this to signify his aspiration to narratorial neutrality or a devotion to noble dreams of objectivity. I basically see it as him deciding that he does not want to focus on the influence that he has indeed had on the complex process of the massacre’s memorialization.
As we know by now, however, the question of whether or not to “appear” in the text has the potential to signify a lot more than that. I am thinking here about the question of to what degree the historian can (and should) allow his own experiences with the sources to pervade his work and shape its final outcome. The deeply personal approaches we get in Binding Memories, Paper Cadavers and also Landscape for a Good Woman are clearly the results of some serious considerations of that particular question. In fact, I see the emphasis on Weld’s own episodes in Guatemala City’s archives and Gengenbach’s intimate encounters with elderly Mozambican women as examples of this element having been activated and taken to its utmost extreme. (And yes: that’s a dare.) Considering all this while reading Kelman, one starts to wonder whether A Misplaced Massacre could perhaps have taken the shape of something more akin to Paper Cadavers where recounting personal involvement is absolutely key. This is not to say that Kelman would necessarily have had to take it to the same degree as Weld, but he could at least have taken it much further in that direction.
A question then arises out out of these speculations (and my point emerges): does Kelman strike us as someone who has seriously considered what the three above-mentioned women and others of their ilk have done in the past two decades – what we have come to refer to in this class as having taken the “archival turn”? Did Kelman make a conscious decision that it is simply better for the “cause” to work within the more familiar framework of journalistic-style history – cliffhangers and all? Or can we perhaps account for him as some historians have (wrongly) explained the persistence of witchcraft into the modern era: as a shadow of a bygone epoch amid the bright dawn of Enlightenment?
Before we answer those questions, let us keep in mind Kelman’s distance in time to his book’s central event: the 150 years that separate him from what took place at Sand Creek make his choice straightforward at least – if not cutting-edge. And to be fair to him, I have to admit that the questions I pose in this blog post are ones that wouldn’t even have crossed my mind had it not been for what we have read thus far: two months ago, I would most certainly have seen Kelman’s book as a very cool way to take on its topic. Gengenbach would have been the odd one.
The final question then has to be: are both ways equally as good when it comes to reckoning with the past’s atrocities?
I’m very keen this week to hear a discussion of something brought up by Aaron re: fracturing the narrative of the nation-state. I was struck by the same passage that Aaron instances, wherein Kelman wonders where the massacre will fit into the national narrative, and while I don’t feel I can add much to Aaron’s probings (I too wondered aghast why this would be necessary and found it complicated his statement of intent re: holding himself at a distance from the story) I would like to venture a guess/response.
It seems to me that this question is, in a way, the primary concern of the book, and I think it’s an important, relevant question to ask, given to circumstances of the conflict. My own feeling was not that Kelman went wild with his shoehorn, but rather that the need to bring dissenting narratives into the American one exists prima facie — if only because of the power dynamics and proximity characterizing the relationship between these communities. The nation state in question here has asymmetrical power in comparison to its dissenters and the same applies to the weight of its narrative. I suppose, pragmatically, justice and dignity in this case could only be obtained through a dialogue with the national narrative and I thought, in the end, Kelman did a fine job showing the successes and failures of that process and succeeded in complicating the national narrative by showing it simply too combative to exist in any meaningful sense —did the memorial really pacify tensions between narratives?
Is there an alternative way of fracturing the national narrative? And out of necessity, are all the parties featured in this story not a part of that narrative regardless of preference — if only because of its power? I was reminded constantly of Paper Cadavers while reading this book, in particular this dialectic the author saw take place on the sight of the archives and I wonder if some of you see a similar process taking place here? eg., ”With Americans still looking to the Civil War as an origin story, the NPS and descendants must contemplate how to interpret an event like Sand Creek, an irredeemable tragedy that casts doubt on the enduring notion that the United States enjoys a special destiny, that it is an exceptional nation among nations, favoured by God” (279).
A Few Quick Ones:
1. Thoughts about no direct quoting from oral histories recorded during site-search? “Because I did not seek permission from the Cheyennes and Arapahos who participated in the ethnographic study to quote from their oral histories, I have not done so. I have relied on summaries provided by the Park Service” (311).
2. Thoughts on Kelman referring to ongoing internet debates? Any problems with this?
3. More broadly, should palliative effects be sought in the construction of memorials? Or is this a waste of their power?
For starters, I have to say I side with many of the previous comments – this was a very well-written book that I thoroughly enjoyed. The main theme here was the painful, protracted, and occasionally poisonous process of public memorialisation of the massacre of Sand Creek. Of course, Sand Creek is not alone – the evolutions of other monument/memorial projects in the recent past have featured extremely fraught and controversial evolutions from the planning stages to reality. So I want to pose a provocative question: Are they worth it?
I want to be really clear, though: I am not suggesting that we not remember events like Sand Creek, that we should not set the record straight, that nations should not confront the ugly side of their national pasts. Absolutely not. I just think it might be useful to consider the question, since it seems like it would be self-evident that yes, we definitely should build big public monuments or set aside large memorial sites. But there are other avenues for the dissemination of history – museums, television, books, lectures, schools, universities, conversations, etc. It just seems to me that often with these big projects, reconciliation is elusive and often the various groups involved feel dissatisfied with the end result (to say the least).
You read in Kelman’s book about the strained relationships between the Cheyenne and NPS, between the Cheyenne and the Arapaho, between the local landowners and everyone else, and so on and so on. Difficulties like that are common. As I read this book, I often thought of the difficulties with the Berlin Holocaust Monument (BHM). To describe the entire process with the BHM would be an essay-length affair, but just in brief: it took 17 years from planning to unveiling; it cost nearly 36 million euros; nobody seemed satisfied with the winning design; when they broke ground, they found out they were building it over Goebbel’s bunker, which caused rethinking and delays; a public controversy broke out over novelist Martin Walser’s denunciation of the project as part of the “holocaust industry,” and his confession of fatigue over the entire subject, a point of view which garnered a lot of support; the government hired a company to work on the monument that owned a subsidiary company which had manufactured Zyklon-B for the death camps during the war; gay rights groups and Roma and Sinti groups were infuriated about the decision to only memorialize Jewish victims of the holocaust at the monument which spawned their own later efforts to get their own dedicated monuments to their victims; and zaniest of all, a lawsuit was filed alleging Holocaust denial over billboards which ADVOCATED FOR the Holocaust monument because they said, “The Holocaust never happened. There are still many people who make this claim. In 20 years, there could be even more.” It is pleasant experiences like that which make me wonder whether everyone’s emotional energy was well-spent.
If you are interested, here are some links which sum up the BHM events I described:
Back to Kelman’s book for a few final thoughts/questions: On page 73, Kelman tells us that it is customary amongst scholars of public memory sites to regard them all as serving contemporary social or political ends to some extent. Is that too cynical?
There was another controversial public memory site mentioned in Kelman’s text: the Civil War monument built in 1909, which is discussed mainly in Chapter Two. We learned that its inclusion of Sand Creek as a “battle” of the Civil War inflamed public opinion, leading to a decision to amend the plaque, which was subsequently reversed. I am curious what side you are on. Should we preserve all monuments, as they are in fact artifacts of the time in which they were built and they reflect the worldviews of the people who built them, even if they present a distorted, unfair, and incorrect account of the past which seriously marginalizes entire peoples? And, of course, even if that incorrect portrayal of events might influence people in the present, where there is still a grave imbalance of power between the descendants of the people who built the monument and the peoples whose history is misrepresented by it? For me, I would have altered the plaque, especially because the monument’s site, so close to the state capitol, also infuses it with a patina of official legitimacy. But I can see the validity of the alternative point of view.
A last thought: I was chilled by the passages in which indigenous peoples recalled the hushed tones and the secrecy in which the real story of Sand Creek was passed down to them by their elders (48-49). The suppression of inconvenient history is something I associated with the USSR and contemporary China – with totalitarian, dictatorial regimes, in short. Clearly for them, the government of the United States was such a regime.
I think A Misplaced Massacre is one of those books that we could spend a month examining and debating. In many ways, Kelman’s efforts constitute a tour de force—this is a great piece of literature, rife with perfectly placed/articulated metaphors in the chapter titles and the body of the text; his overall narrative flow is wonderful; and the range and depth of sources present in the footnotes is commendable. In others, his shortcomings are quite pronounced—I am thoroughly confused by Kelman’s belief that he does “not appear as a character in these pages” (x) as, for me, his character was omnipresent; there isn’t enough ink dedicated to the history of legislating the memorialization process in the U.S.; we aren’t given a satisfactory explanation for why Native oral history is absent. What I attempt to do in this blog post is consider Kelman’s attempt to weave overlapping, often competing narratives alongside a host of overarching, but sometimes subtle themes, including authority/authorship, narrative, memory, and audience.
At the heart of A Misplaced Massacre are contestations of memory. It becomes clear throughout the text that memory and memorialization are layered processes—they are acts that reflect not just individual and collective identity, but also sovereignty. This is true both of the ‘American’ and the ‘Indian’ viewpoint in Colorado. The ability to remember/memorialize is intricately linked to political autonomy and cultural authority. In Kelman’s telling, the National Parks Service initially took this linkage for granted; this might be unsurprising given the NPS’s relative position of authority. The Cheyennes and Arapahos who view(ed) Sand Creek as more than just a historical event—as “an emotionally and psychologically present event” (109)—understood and made clear their understanding that this linkage was central to the memorialization process. Yet despite these actors’ eventual ability to forge a working relationship, perhaps the most significant conclusion of this book is one of failure. Of course, the competing claims to authorship and meaning in the making of the Sand Creek National Historic Site could never have been fully satisfied. We can clearly see that neither the NPS team members nor the Native voices (especially) were comfortable with the resolution. The NPS team hoped that the Site would represent its “commitment to pluralism and incorporating Native voices into the national narrative the agency constructs,” as well as “a template for future cooperation between federal authorities and Indian peoples” and “a way to satisfy a select group of influential politicians who wanted the massacre memorialized.” (85-86) They were successful in at least one of their aims. The Cheyenne/Arapaho descendants were more immediately concerned with promoting “healing within their tribes,” realizing the reparations claims of the Little Arkansas Treaty, and “maintaining cultural and political sovereignty throughout the painful memorialization process.” (86) They were successful, to some degree, in two of their aims. Kelman, moreover, is cognizant of these failures. By returning to the ‘landscape’ metaphor in his conclusion, Kelman offers a suggestion for those confronting the shortcomings of this memorialization process: “NPS officials and the descendants…might agree that the historic site should challenge visitors to grapple with competing narratives of U.S. history, to struggle with ironies embedded in the American past. If that happens, then perhaps the massacre will no longer be misplaced in the landscape of national memory.” (279) On first reading, this struck me as a weak conclusion because it seemed so open-ended. But after some reflection I think I can appreciate Kelman’s sentiment here. Alongside those themes of authority/authorship, narrative, and memory that run throughout A Misplaced Massacre, Kelman is asking us (i.e., academic historians) to seriously consider our audience. Audience is a crucial element throughout the text—the political actors are constantly mindful (and reminded) of their respective audiences as they conduct their work. This conclusion is Kelman’s way of letting us know that we too have be mindful (and reminded) of our audience. I think that, in this way, A Misplaced Massacre takes on a new level of significance. Its willingness to engage public history (and all the issues of politics and authority that come with it) is what stands out most for me.
Firstly, this book is remarkably well written. It reads like a long piece of investigative journalism complete with plot twists, cliff-hangers etc. It’s brilliant.
I find myself asking similar questions to Connor about Kelman’s own position in the text, though. The book is unusual in laying bare many of the uncertainties or indeterminacies that often shroud historical sources that derive from traumatic events, and for grappling really concretely with the process of producing and contesting public history. At root, this is really Kelman’s purpose in writing it the book (x). And yet that kind of methodological forthrightness makes his own absence in the text all the more glaring. The pronoun “I,” for example, only appears in quotations. Kelman explains this decision in the preface by saying that the story “is not in any meaningful way mine, and the people who can legitimately claim it as their own are far more interesting than I am” (x). And yet if the book is about “the collision of history and memory” and he’s gone so far as to write a history book on the subject, how can he really say that he’s not part of the story? He seems to be as much a part of it as the NPS.
I think there are methodological points to be made here about authorship and scepticism towards one’s own judgment etc., but one of the things this raises for me is ownership of the past. One of the things that is perhaps underlining Kelman’s position is a particular notion of the possession or ownership of history, that is, the idea that the history of Sand Creek belongs in some sense to others. This seems to be a subject that only arises when we talk about trauma and its legacies, in this case through a particularly brutal moment in the history of American settler colonialism. It’s also a subject that obviously has application to historical artefacts—everything from bullets to pins to bodies—and efforts at their repatriation. But what about the “story”? I guess my question in this regard is simple: who, if anyone, owns the story of the Sand Creek Massacre? And how should that shape history writing?
Memory of a Massacre is a poignant example of the “history wars” that have become major political theatres in many contemporary societies. As the author states in the first chapter, conflicts over what “really” happened, and who somebody or some group “really” was/were reflect contemporary political interests, and often, as they book demonstrates, a myriad of other forces: private and community/regional financial interests, the highly specific interests and personalities of individual stakeholders, and of course, the desire for a sense of justice, recognition, respect, dignity on behalf of victims, families of victims, descendants of victims.
What the specific example examined in this book illustrates is how these battles are shaped by realities of power and voice. Because the Cheyenne and Arapaho communities of north-eastern Colorado are a colonized people lacking the geo-political or economic power to decide this question themselves, they were not only faced with reaching consensus among themselves, but also with various levels and arms of the United States government, as well as local, property-owning white Americans and other outside lobbies. In other words, their denial of sovereignty generally also meant a denial of sovereignty in the decision making process of how the Sandcreek Massacre should be remembered.
The book also raises the question: can a society embrace the ugly episodes of its past without glorifying them, can it confront this ugliness without condemning it? This is an especially important question given the common argument that a nation needs its myths and heroes in order to foster a sense of identity, pride, unity, etc. Recently in Canada there was some controversy over the 200th birthday of Sir John A McDonald, who was both “the father of Confederation” (as the standard Canadian history books say) and a very, very bad man (in my humble of opinion). I personally feel that we don’t need to tear down the statues of such people, and we can retain them as “national historical figures” while also frankly acknowledging the oppression and injustice they were responsible for; while also renewing and elaborating such “official histories” by working to celebrate the many great men and women left out of the history textbooks. But of course this is no easy task.
Initially I was looking forward to reading a piece of history, identifiable as such by its method, author’s position as an academic historian, and subject matter. The latter in particular intrigued me. I have noticed in the Canadian context, historians find it difficult to write about Indigenous history and tell more than the one dominant narrative, even when other stories would complicate, enrich, and provoke present attitudes and understandings (put differently, I think nuanced and even competing narratives are important and do not necessarily preclude one from acknowledging the injustices of the past). Kelman’s approach gave me hope at the onset: three massacre stories were introduced, one from a perpetrator, one from a witness, and one from a victim, with competing cartographies, and I anticipated the telling was going to be complicated and challenge simplistic understandings about the past (especially with opening comments about the “palliative” nature of memorials). As I read, however, I discovered that the level of detail that Kelman is willing to include in his narrative threatens to obscure the story’s significance.
Needless to say, Kelman’s zeal for storytelling left me uncertain. On the one hand, his creative descriptions of characters and settings brings his story to life and offers the reader a sense of the way things happened, as if they were present: “A gripping narrator, Halaas spoke with swinging rhythms, built characters like a novelist, and wove telling detail into his stories” (109; Kelman could be writing about himself). But on the other hand, how would Colleen and Laird Cometsevah (among others) feel when they read his description of them in the text (155)? For the first couple of chapters, A Misplaced Massacre reads like a novel, as Kelman carefully unfolds the narrative without resolving the conflict too quickly. By the end of chapter three, however, the story has been told. What follows is perhaps an attempt to highlight cultural differences or the many perspectives of his characters, but I am not sure. In chapter three he quotes Mildred Red Cherries, “Indian people don’t walk away from someone until we’re done talking. We don’t leave a relative or a friend just to be on time” (107) and then speculates on the perspectives of NPS officials to highlight clashes in cultural perspectives on time and respect. Is his lengthy interest in Dawson and the Bowens, or his inclusion of Internet debate about memorializing the massacre, an attempt to portray varying perspectives on American history, e.g. “they’re always victims” (225)?
By the time 9/11 was introduced he had lost me (189). Although in retrospect I can admit that this is perhaps a useful American analogy for viewing military history and Indigenous people, read from a Canadian perspective steeped in the recent Truth and Reconciliation Commission, it makes parochial what is otherwise an international issue (colonization and Indigenous peoples). I was disappointed that resolution, to an extent, came with a theory that the stream had shifted course, rather than a discussion that involves the topic the “United States…as an exceptional nation among nations” (279), which Kelman is not certain visitors to the Sand Creek site are ready to broach.
A contemporary analogy to this work stayed in the back of my mind during most of Kelman’s narrative. In 2011 in Lethbridge a large stone was taken which sat outside the replica of the fort that once existed. The speculation was that the person who had taken it wanted it as a decorative piece, as it was a seemingly unclaimed 700 pound stone, and could make an attractive ornament to a lawn. The stone, however, was a Blackfoot artifact, known as the Medicine Stone, and as site of spiritual significance. While there was a sign stating this nearby, it was not obvious this stone had a history beyond the present; an average passerby would merely see an apolitical stone. After the media condemned the stealing it was eventually returned in the middle of the night, in a different position from where it originally sat. The city worked together with Blackfoot elders to reorient the stone, and a ceremony was held. After that, the Medicine Stone had a fence placed around it by the city and a new, larger plaque commemorating the Blackfoot story. The way this story was told always bothered me. It was portrayed as a town getting together to right a wrong and help the Blackfoot population protect a heritage. I feel as though this narrative placed a white settler colonial narrative as existing above the Blackfoot narrative. The site was only legitimized when a fence and plaque were placed around it, and the stone was an acceptable monument to Indigenous heritage. The memory of the rock was reshaped by a narrative of white redemption and protection. The plaque makes no mention of the stealing of the rock. I think that one of the major importances of Kelman’s work drifting between past and present is to show that neither narrative can exist on their own and that a history is as political as that present. Ignoring either aspect misses the story. The Medicine Stone was misplaced (both literally and figuratively), and the narrative born from its monuentalization was one of a white town rescuing indigenous history, while the white town and the indigenous history were kept very much apart.
I loved the discussion of geography at the end! I think it destabilizes the very foundations which much of historical knowledge rests on. I also admired the structure, where each chapter seemed to start in a present and begin blurring and diving into the past. Kelman proves how important history is, and how powerful History can be. I think it is the interplay between [h]istory and [H]istory Kelman highlights that makes his work so brilliant.
While I really did like this work, I had a question that I was not sure the answer to. Is the study of memory and monuments relatively new, or have historians adopted it late? I have read older sociological work that seems similar to Kelman. Have historians addressed these ideas before?
To read this book was a bit weird for me: At the beginning I was impressed by Kelman’s style of writing and both topics and purpose are interesting. But the more I read I became more and more annoyed by Kelman’s style. To put it in a nutshell, at this point I disagree with Conor and Devin. Sure, this book has some literary value and in some ways it is impressive how Kelman weaves different storylines together and uses cliff-hangers. But for two reasons I dislike this: First, it makes it difficult to work with this book, be it for reconstructing his argumentation(s) or for rediscovering details. Several times in this book I thought that this specific story would have been better placed in a footnote. Second, I didn’t feel to be taken seriously as a reader. Especially Kelman’s habit of using flashbacks caused this feeling: Several times in this book he purported that this and that problem has been solved – for example the approval of the congress. But later in the book Kelman surprises everybody with the “news” that the problem was not yet solved entirely. This seem to me like a cheap trick to gain the reader’s attention and it also makes it impossible for me to think about explanations of or solutions for a problem since I can never be sure if Kelman has not withheld important information from me.
However, the topic (politics of remembrance) is interesting and the story of establishing this memorial site shows the variety of possible obstacles: The question of the place (I knew that the Battle of Teutoburger Forest has not been located, but this is almost 2000 years old and I had not assumed that it is so difficult to detect such a recent event), the very heterogeneous and multifaceted interests of locals, the NPS and descendants plus some reactionaries and ultimately the interpretation of the whole event and it’s presentation. Still I think that it would have been useful to structure the book in a more old-fashioned way (probably including some background-information about memorial sites in general, the NPS and the Cheyenne/Arapaho-US-relationship) in order to present this complexity in an understandable way.
My comments this week have a lot to do with the questions Moe already brought up in his post. While there is a lot more going on in the book, much of A Misplaced Massacre is devoted to examining how the tension between different narratives of the past figures into the creation of national monuments. Whenever a government agency designates a historical monument, they are, sometimes quite literally, fixing a narrative of the past into stone. In his book, Kelman examines the different ways in which the process of fixing such a narrative can be used. Two of the most obvious uses are to establish national myths which can be used to encourage certain cultural values and as an attempt at reconciliation with groups who have been wronged in the past.
It is clear that Kelman is opposed to or at least extremely skeptical about these two particular uses of fixed narratives from the way he characterises news articles that invoke these tropes throughout his piece. Despite this, Kelman does not directly challenge the creation of such narratives. At the end of his conclusion he even in some sense endorses them, noting that the Sand Creek site will complicate many visitors’ views of the Civil War in a positive way. I imagine his conclusion would have been much different if Jerry Russell and the other “Sand Creek was a Battle” people had been allowed to control the narrative at the Civil War Memorial and the Sand Creek site. While it seems unlikely that such a narrative could win out in the current political climate, times do change. That leads me to my questions for this week:
Should history be used to create national myths? There seem to be cases where this use of history can have both positive and negative consequences.
Is there a way to do public history that allows for multiple narratives which is both easily digestible and provides a more nuanced account of historical events?
A very important point which this book brought out for me was the issue of how to fracture the metanarrative of the nation state. In particular it problematizes the difficult process of memorialization as a strategy for healing and unity, when there are divergent voices and unresolved issues. Kelman does a very good job of bringing the divergent voices and the ideas which inform them into focus and then contrasting them (Federal, native, local etc.…). However, I remain somewhat skeptical as to whether or not Kelman actually is able to write a history that itself operates outside the nationalist metanarrative. To Kelman himself “it remains unclear where the massacre fits into the national narrative. “(278) I think that the problem with what Kelman is trying to do is thinking that this has to be shoehorned into the American narrative. Divergent voices or not, Kelman is still conceiving of this incident as the history of the American nation. The Cheyenne, importantly, state in the book that they are not so much concerned with becoming or being American as they are with preserving and living out their own culture. However, the whole process of memorialization reveals that even when untidy, dissenting histories and explanations are still institutionally bounded (here the NPS, state, and municipality) by the nation. I find this interesting. If one were to write a history of the Cheyenne and Arapaho people before and after their encounter with Europeans, would this change the way that the history of the Sand Creek Massacre would be written? Would the telos of incorporation in the American nation still structure the history of that people? Why should one see this as an essentially U.S. History?
Second, Kelman claims “I do not appear as a character in these pages” and the story “is not in any meaningful way mine” (x). I very much disagree with this. Kelman in selecting and framing how the memorialization process was undertaken is making himself an actor in this exercise of public memory. The incident where he recalls the different reactions between the native observers and the scientists who discover human remains on a farm near the site is a case in point. The scientists are elated, while the Native American observers withdraw upset. Kelman’s framing is very evocative and raises, certainly intentionally, emotional responses that make the reader feel the scientists and their reaction was inappropriate, while privileging and validating the Cheyenne observers’ response (129). I do not fault Kelman for the particular description, nor the reaction the reader would surely have, but I do not feel that he is being honest about his role. Can the historian ever extricate oneself from being an actor in one’s own work? Even the most detached magisterial work, such the work Braudel did on the Mediterranean, with a voice that is far removed from a connection with the subject casts an authorial shadow that is just as active and influential in its non-recognition as it would have been in its recognition.
There are many things that I really appreciated about this book. Aside from how incredibly well written and compelling it is, it engages several very important issues and ideas pertinent to historians (and, I would hope, the general public) in an in depth and meaningful way.
The first that I would note is – one that reverberates through the whole work – the value of telling ‘your own’ story. The story of the book is the story of people fighting for their RIGHT to tell their own story. Last week we looked at several biographies, autobiographies and life histories – notably Written As I Remember It, which deals with, among other things, the memory of traumatic events and the importance of being able to voice that experience. There is an urgent sense in Kelman’s work of just how meaningful the act of storytelling is, not just politically (which is a very big concern), but also on the individual level, and how powerful the act of honouring your or your ancestors’ experience is.
Secondly, the book raises the issue of violence, and how we not only write about violence, but how we think about violence. The question at the forefront of the debates surrounding the creation of the Sand Creek site is, of course, the question of whether or not it should be labelled a massacre or a battle. This raises really important questions for historians because these labels are seemingly so subjective, but also carry so much weight and real-world consequences. But he also stresses that we can appreciate not only physical violence, but also historical violence through silencing stories that ‘don’t fit’.
And lastly, I was really struck by Kelman’s discussion and analysis of the “shifting creek bed” and his questioning of “the landscape’s apparent utility as a commemorative canvas, a vehicle for the lessons of the past into the present and the future?” (278) Envisioning memory like a landscape, and acknowledging how even landscapes change over time is a very powerful idea for me. It strikes directly at our interconnectivity with our lived environments, and also at the unstable nature of everything (history/memory/ourselves/geographies/nations/etc.)
That’s probably a good place to conclude 🙂
Ari Kelman’s A Misplaced Massacre is a very beautiful narrative about narratives and histories rather than about the story of the sand creek per se.
Kelman opens the book by the story of the Sand Creek massacre, although the massacre itself is not the subject of the book. I would argue, the author denies that there exist “the story” of the massacre. For Kelman, it is clear that his aim of analyzing these very different perspectives is to provide the public the method of how history is made. He shows the complicated process of making history by first introducing three different characters of that time: John Chivington, Silas Soule, and George Bent, two perpetrators and one survivor of the massacre. They have very different perspectives about the massacre, for Chivington it was a battle against hostile foes, and for Soule and Bent, it was an inhumane massacre. He argues that during Chivington’s time, it was the Amercian expansionism version that prevailed. However, as time passed by, the offical version of the history cannot pinpoint the actual site of the massacre, and they have lost touch with the descendants of the Sand Creek’s victims. So along the way of trying to build the historical monument, the author explores different perspectives along the way and different motives behind the scene. As for the indian tribes representatives, their motivation of helping the building of the historical site lies in their motive of pursing reparations that had heen promised but not fulfilled. William Dawson, a rancher who claims he owns Sand Creek, did so because he wants to gain profit from this process besides his friendship with the tribe representatives. Other people also claim that their property as being other possible sites for the massacre. Moreover, locals became concerned about the effect a federal memorial will have on their own property rights and whether tourism will change their living enviornment. Moreover, at the opening ceremony of the Historical Site, Kelma argues that different people have very different motivations behind it. For many politicians, this Historical site is a way of reconciliation with the violent past and for others, this is a the starting point of forming a new narrative against the previous one: the refusal to reconciliate so easily. Among those very different and complicated perspectives about the story, Kelman illustrates the complexity of history itself, and that history is shaped and still shaping by different political, ecnomic and cultural interests as well as ideas, stories and memories.
Kelman concludes that “the story of memorializing Sand Creek suggests that history and memory are malleable, that even the land, despite its implied promise of permanence, can change, and that people of the United States are so various that they should not be expected to share a single tale of a common past” (279). I think for Kelman himself, he refuses to reconcile so easily with the past, rather, he predicts that different perspectives about this history will continue to appear and to shape and to be shaped by the narrative itself.
Also, if I have a question about it, it would be like Conor’s and many others’ about the author’s claim that he does not appear as a character in these pages. He defintely is and he cannot escape it. So I wonder what other people would think about that.
In lieu of a thoughtful analysis about the political contestation of malleable memories (a few of you have already treated this better here than I could do) or an account on the futility of attempting to redeem the ghosts of a past injustice (I exhausted my best thoughts on that topic three or so weeks ago), I want to compare A Misplaced Massacre to some of our prior readings with the aim of probing how stories of that sort can be written.
The single aspect I have in mind is Kelman’s intention to pull back as a character in the book – to “not appear”, as he writes, in the narrative (x). I don’t imagine he wants us to take this to signify his aspiration to narratorial neutrality or a devotion to noble dreams of objectivity. I basically see it as him deciding that he does not want to focus on the influence that he has indeed had on the complex process of the massacre’s memorialization.
As we know by now, however, the question of whether or not to “appear” in the text has the potential to signify a lot more than that. I am thinking here about the question of to what degree the historian can (and should) allow his own experiences with the sources to pervade his work and shape its final outcome. The deeply personal approaches we get in Binding Memories, Paper Cadavers and also Landscape for a Good Woman are clearly the results of some serious considerations of that particular question. In fact, I see the emphasis on Weld’s own episodes in Guatemala City’s archives and Gengenbach’s intimate encounters with elderly Mozambican women as examples of this element having been activated and taken to its utmost extreme. (And yes: that’s a dare.) Considering all this while reading Kelman, one starts to wonder whether A Misplaced Massacre could perhaps have taken the shape of something more akin to Paper Cadavers where recounting personal involvement is absolutely key. This is not to say that Kelman would necessarily have had to take it to the same degree as Weld, but he could at least have taken it much further in that direction.
A question then arises out out of these speculations (and my point emerges): does Kelman strike us as someone who has seriously considered what the three above-mentioned women and others of their ilk have done in the past two decades – what we have come to refer to in this class as having taken the “archival turn”? Did Kelman make a conscious decision that it is simply better for the “cause” to work within the more familiar framework of journalistic-style history – cliffhangers and all? Or can we perhaps account for him as some historians have (wrongly) explained the persistence of witchcraft into the modern era: as a shadow of a bygone epoch amid the bright dawn of Enlightenment?
Before we answer those questions, let us keep in mind Kelman’s distance in time to his book’s central event: the 150 years that separate him from what took place at Sand Creek make his choice straightforward at least – if not cutting-edge. And to be fair to him, I have to admit that the questions I pose in this blog post are ones that wouldn’t even have crossed my mind had it not been for what we have read thus far: two months ago, I would most certainly have seen Kelman’s book as a very cool way to take on its topic. Gengenbach would have been the odd one.
The final question then has to be: are both ways equally as good when it comes to reckoning with the past’s atrocities?
Main Interest:
I’m very keen this week to hear a discussion of something brought up by Aaron re: fracturing the narrative of the nation-state. I was struck by the same passage that Aaron instances, wherein Kelman wonders where the massacre will fit into the national narrative, and while I don’t feel I can add much to Aaron’s probings (I too wondered aghast why this would be necessary and found it complicated his statement of intent re: holding himself at a distance from the story) I would like to venture a guess/response.
It seems to me that this question is, in a way, the primary concern of the book, and I think it’s an important, relevant question to ask, given to circumstances of the conflict. My own feeling was not that Kelman went wild with his shoehorn, but rather that the need to bring dissenting narratives into the American one exists prima facie — if only because of the power dynamics and proximity characterizing the relationship between these communities. The nation state in question here has asymmetrical power in comparison to its dissenters and the same applies to the weight of its narrative. I suppose, pragmatically, justice and dignity in this case could only be obtained through a dialogue with the national narrative and I thought, in the end, Kelman did a fine job showing the successes and failures of that process and succeeded in complicating the national narrative by showing it simply too combative to exist in any meaningful sense —did the memorial really pacify tensions between narratives?
Is there an alternative way of fracturing the national narrative? And out of necessity, are all the parties featured in this story not a part of that narrative regardless of preference — if only because of its power? I was reminded constantly of Paper Cadavers while reading this book, in particular this dialectic the author saw take place on the sight of the archives and I wonder if some of you see a similar process taking place here? eg., ”With Americans still looking to the Civil War as an origin story, the NPS and descendants must contemplate how to interpret an event like Sand Creek, an irredeemable tragedy that casts doubt on the enduring notion that the United States enjoys a special destiny, that it is an exceptional nation among nations, favoured by God” (279).
A Few Quick Ones:
1. Thoughts about no direct quoting from oral histories recorded during site-search? “Because I did not seek permission from the Cheyennes and Arapahos who participated in the ethnographic study to quote from their oral histories, I have not done so. I have relied on summaries provided by the Park Service” (311).
2. Thoughts on Kelman referring to ongoing internet debates? Any problems with this?
3. More broadly, should palliative effects be sought in the construction of memorials? Or is this a waste of their power?
For starters, I have to say I side with many of the previous comments – this was a very well-written book that I thoroughly enjoyed. The main theme here was the painful, protracted, and occasionally poisonous process of public memorialisation of the massacre of Sand Creek. Of course, Sand Creek is not alone – the evolutions of other monument/memorial projects in the recent past have featured extremely fraught and controversial evolutions from the planning stages to reality. So I want to pose a provocative question: Are they worth it?
I want to be really clear, though: I am not suggesting that we not remember events like Sand Creek, that we should not set the record straight, that nations should not confront the ugly side of their national pasts. Absolutely not. I just think it might be useful to consider the question, since it seems like it would be self-evident that yes, we definitely should build big public monuments or set aside large memorial sites. But there are other avenues for the dissemination of history – museums, television, books, lectures, schools, universities, conversations, etc. It just seems to me that often with these big projects, reconciliation is elusive and often the various groups involved feel dissatisfied with the end result (to say the least).
You read in Kelman’s book about the strained relationships between the Cheyenne and NPS, between the Cheyenne and the Arapaho, between the local landowners and everyone else, and so on and so on. Difficulties like that are common. As I read this book, I often thought of the difficulties with the Berlin Holocaust Monument (BHM). To describe the entire process with the BHM would be an essay-length affair, but just in brief: it took 17 years from planning to unveiling; it cost nearly 36 million euros; nobody seemed satisfied with the winning design; when they broke ground, they found out they were building it over Goebbel’s bunker, which caused rethinking and delays; a public controversy broke out over novelist Martin Walser’s denunciation of the project as part of the “holocaust industry,” and his confession of fatigue over the entire subject, a point of view which garnered a lot of support; the government hired a company to work on the monument that owned a subsidiary company which had manufactured Zyklon-B for the death camps during the war; gay rights groups and Roma and Sinti groups were infuriated about the decision to only memorialize Jewish victims of the holocaust at the monument which spawned their own later efforts to get their own dedicated monuments to their victims; and zaniest of all, a lawsuit was filed alleging Holocaust denial over billboards which ADVOCATED FOR the Holocaust monument because they said, “The Holocaust never happened. There are still many people who make this claim. In 20 years, there could be even more.” It is pleasant experiences like that which make me wonder whether everyone’s emotional energy was well-spent.
If you are interested, here are some links which sum up the BHM events I described:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/germans/memorial/cron.html
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/monument-to-sinti-and-roma-murdered-in-the-holocaust-opens-in-berlin-a-863212.html
Back to Kelman’s book for a few final thoughts/questions: On page 73, Kelman tells us that it is customary amongst scholars of public memory sites to regard them all as serving contemporary social or political ends to some extent. Is that too cynical?
There was another controversial public memory site mentioned in Kelman’s text: the Civil War monument built in 1909, which is discussed mainly in Chapter Two. We learned that its inclusion of Sand Creek as a “battle” of the Civil War inflamed public opinion, leading to a decision to amend the plaque, which was subsequently reversed. I am curious what side you are on. Should we preserve all monuments, as they are in fact artifacts of the time in which they were built and they reflect the worldviews of the people who built them, even if they present a distorted, unfair, and incorrect account of the past which seriously marginalizes entire peoples? And, of course, even if that incorrect portrayal of events might influence people in the present, where there is still a grave imbalance of power between the descendants of the people who built the monument and the peoples whose history is misrepresented by it? For me, I would have altered the plaque, especially because the monument’s site, so close to the state capitol, also infuses it with a patina of official legitimacy. But I can see the validity of the alternative point of view.
A last thought: I was chilled by the passages in which indigenous peoples recalled the hushed tones and the secrecy in which the real story of Sand Creek was passed down to them by their elders (48-49). The suppression of inconvenient history is something I associated with the USSR and contemporary China – with totalitarian, dictatorial regimes, in short. Clearly for them, the government of the United States was such a regime.
I’ll save the rest for class!