Image: Gast, John. American Progress. 1872. Chromolithograph published by George A, Crofutt, 12 3/4 inch x 16 3/4 inch. Autry Museum of the American West. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Manifest destiny, the notion of inevitable American territorial conquest, justified westward expansion in the 19th century. Historical narratives portray expansion as bringing “progress” to uncivilized Native Americans, perhaps best articulated by John Gast’s 1873 chromolithograph print American Progress. Prevailing cultural tropes fixate on the stories of the pioneer wagons trailing Columbia, a White feminine symbol for America, as she tames the frontier of the “Wild” West with education and technology. Instead, this gallery shifts focus to the edge of American Progress, where, forcibly displaced from their ancestral lands, Native Americans are being pushed out of frame. The works in this gallery imagine an alternative “West” and, in doing so, they deconstruct ideas and policies of settler-colonialism and interrogate notions of progress.

Artist's Statement: Watching multiple Western films for the class, I immediately made the connection between them and the “Frontierland” section of Disney parks. I had not only watched “construction of the West” on my screen; I had experienced “Frontierland” in the same way that I had a favorite childhood ride, “Splash Mountain,” withdrawn earlier in the summer of 2020 in the wake of George Floyd’s death and its aftermath. “Splash Mountain,” a park ride with whimsical, singing animatronic animals, had roots in the post-antebellum South and was tied to a deeply problematic film, “Song of the South,” that Disney has now tucked away for more than thirty years. Disney has survived and grown not just as a company but as a cultural empire because it has built a “Disneyfied” version of America and American history, curating fundamental notions and ideals. It is a version of history that is difficult for me and entire generations to question because of the label’s nostalgic and emotional power over us.

The process of creating my Frontierland collage with intentionality gave me valuable insight into the layers of myth construction which Disney itself undertakes. In my take on John Gast’s iconic painting, “American Progress,” I decided to “disneyfy” Manifest Destiny, giving her Disney princess-like features and the iconic Minnie Mouse ears. She is guiding us westward to “Frontierland,” the idealized version of the West that masses of Disneyland visitors have all experienced. The barren, rugged landscape is recognizable as “Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.” In the southeastern corner of my composition is the iconic front of the “Splash Mountain.” The foundation of the ride is no longer the offensive Disney movie Song of the South, but the notorious tune of “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah,” still seeking to occlude the harsh realities of the slave plantation. Various other elements of the park and other Disney creations—maps, film snippets-- come together in this collage, along with notorious racial stereotypes of Native Americans and African Americans, underscored by a quote from Disney’s current disclaimer for images that are “wrong then and wrong now.”[1] But they are still part of a “Dis-tory” fed to young generations often consumed throughout lifetimes. It is one I try to challenge with this work.

[1] Stunson, Mike. “ Classic Disney films get stronger warning of racist content. ‘Wrong then and wrong now.’” Miami Herald, October 19, 2020. https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article246552143.html.

Artist's Statement: Many board games—Monopoly, Risk, and Settlers of Catan, for example—are rooted in Western and colonial ideologies of capitalism, imperialism, and individualism, in that the objective of such games is to accumulate the most wealth and/or land in order to destroy your opponents. I created Destiny Dismantled in an attempt to trouble the ideologies of these classic board games and against the normative archive of the U.S. West, trying to do so showing care and reflexivity in knowledge production.[1]

In Destiny Dismantled, players are placed within a fully-westernized and fully-colonized United States imaginary—the “map” of the nation rests disconnected from any other land masses or countries and is constructed of imaginaries of “the West,” disentangled from time or place. Columbia, of the famed and oft-reproduced American Progress painting, rules over part of the board, with The Cowboy by her side. The transcontinental railroad, represented by a collage of its own popular representation (a cut up Wikipedia article) cuts through the map, and in the east is the Vanishing Indian, a trope frozen in the physical manifestation of the 17^th century Massachusetts Bay Colony’s first official seal. These are three icons of the West and its always-finished yet always-progressing project of “destiny manifestation,” and, as such, are the objects and ideas that the players in my imaginary game may find themselves performatively responding to, disrupting, and dismantling.

[1] Tsinnajinnie, Leola, et al. “K’É AND TDAYP-TDAY-GAW: Embodying Indigenous Relationality in Research Methods.” In Applying Indigenous Research Methods. New York: Routledge, 2019.

Artist's Statement: This collage reflects my understanding of the ways in which Native American history is represented in popular culture. More specifically, it represents my understanding of what is included in popular representations of this history, and what is not. Growing up in India, I was only exposed to Native American history through the occasional Disney film. Nevertheless, I remember being confounded and intrigued by these groups called ‘Indians,’ groups that were so similar to me in nomenclature but so different in culture.

For this work, I started by thinking about what it meant to represent indigenous culture as an object of fascination and mystery, and the implications of declaring Native American history as something that can be advertised--a commodification which removes agency and control over telling their own stories. I collected a series of advertisements published between 1902 and 1945, each of which promoted specific railroad companies. Rather than drawing attention to the railway carriage itself, the advertisements emphasize the views and vistas that customers would be privy to, if they made avail of the service: the lands that once belonged to indigenous people and societies, with their history and cultures positioned as must-see tourist attractions, and intriguing artifacts of the past. Erased in these advertisements are the bloodshed and violence that made it possible for a railway company to traverse these lands and claim them as navigable.

The viewer should look at each advertisement individually, and then the pictures behind them. The latter represent history that is largely overlooked and ignored. Coupled with the fact that they outnumber the advertisements, the pictures reflect my deliberate choice to highlight their importance. Regardless of whether it is pushed into the background or not, the history they depict cannot be ignored, and will thus continue to be crucial to our understanding of the consequences of things done in the name of progress and modernization.