The sometimes decades-long campaigns to erect monuments attest to the commodification of memory, as Indian ways of memory making tied to place and shared storytelling gave way to static objects produced in market economies whose meaning frequently faded over time. Absent the regular recitation of history embedded in oral cultures that fueled history tied to place, the meaning of monuments threatened to become unmoored from memory. Commodified memory making divorced from storytelling threatened to produce landscapes punctuated with statues, plaques, and markers whose meaning dissipated across the years absent tangible connections made to them through storytelling.
—JEAN M O’BRIEN, Firsting and Lasting, 2010