Frontier Mythology, Settler Spaces and Commemoration in Minneapolis, MN

Keywords: settler colonialism, racialized landscapes, white supremacy, public memory, monuments
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Sunday
Session Start / End Time: 2/27/2022 11:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/27/2022 12:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 6

Abstract

This paper seeks to understand how settler state power is initiated, consolidated, and ultimately mythologized in Minneapolis, MN., My archival research, landscape analysis, and interviews show how the commemoration of stolen Indigenous land and resources acts as an operation of settler colonialism in B.F. Nelson Park in Minneapolis, MN. Named after the operator of the first factories on the location of today’s park, the land has gone through several transformations from an industrial site to an inactive, polluted brownfield slated for a federal interstate project that did not materialize. This piece of land epitomizes the role that racial capitalism and settler colonialism played in industrial expansion and polluting of the area. My focus is the Pioneer statue, a large granite memorial depicting a frontier family in the middle of the park, which I examine through the lenses of race, gender, and violence. My analysis shows how two municipal constituencies help maintain white supremacist narratives of European settlement and in turn uphold the monument where settler state power is consolidated through the frontier mythology and American exceptionalism. At the same time, various forms of visual and verbal resistance to the monument suggest growing decolonial refusal of such settler sites as the Pioneer monument.