Narrating the Sand Creek Massacre: Spectacle and Survivance at Denver’s History Colorado Center
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Keywords: Narrative Geography, Cultural Geography, Museum Geography, Emotion and Affect, Geography of Memory
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract
Authors:
Sam Smith, University of Colorado, Boulder
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Abstract
In April 2012, Colorado’s state historical society opened its new state history museum, with exhibits using immersive storytelling to present “Coloradans at their best—and worst.” Among these was an exhibit on the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre of Cheyenne and Arapahoe Indians. Yet the exhibit closed a year later, following tribal objections to presenting the massacre as a “Collision” of cultures, and protests of exclusion from the exhibit design process. Over a decade later, History Colorado once again presented the story of Sand Creek—this time with extensive tribal consultation, and an exhibit centered on Indian people, their stories, and their agency.
In this paper, I use spatial narrative analysis to contrast the exhibits and explore three key differences. First, while the prior exhibit presented multiple perspectives on the massacre, the new exhibit places Native perspectives at the center of an extended narrative. Second, while the prior exhibit immersed the visitor within the sights and sounds of violence, the new exhibit deploys media in more subtle ways. Finally, the new exhibit offers both clearer conclusions and opportunities for personal reflection and mourning. In doing so, History Colorado offers not only a more extended engagement with Native presence than most U.S. state history museums, but also incorporates dimensions of museum memorialization that are not typically found amid the positive civic narratives of state history museums. This contrast thus highlights new frontiers in geographies of memory and memorialization.
Narrating the Sand Creek Massacre: Spectacle and Survivance at Denver’s History Colorado Center
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Paper Abstract