At Home in Illinois
History is, however, not simply what happened, but the representation of what happened. Dominant representations of Native-settler historical encounters in places like Champaign-Urbana have tended until recently to play up white settlers and downplay, even erase, Native Americans in subtle and not so subtle ways. . . . Key in this regard is that in […]
Indian Wars, Memory, and Midwestern Identity
If local tradition and place names are any indication, Black Hawk spent the bulk of his time sitting on large rocks and gazing out over the Rock River. From Black Hawk’s Watch Tower at Rock Island to Indian Rock and Indian Head Rock thirty or forty miles upriver, to the bluff at Eagle’s Nest and […]
Mohawk Interruptus
Under the conditions of settler colonialism in North America, which is an ongoing and structural project to acquire land, to maintain that land, and to eliminate who is on it, there has been a great violence, a dispossession, and, thankfully, there has been failure. It did not completely work. There are still Indians. Some still […]