Oregon professor is finding that a racist past is often left off monuments

(NOVEMBER 1, 2020) Many people have been protesting racial injustice around the country. Sometimes protesters try to destroy statues of leaders of the past. Often those historical leaders represent political or social views that are no longer honored. On October 11, 2020, for example, protesters in Portland toppled statues of Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.

Laura Pulido is a professor at the University of Oregon. She is conducting research to learn more about the connections between historical monuments and racial justice. She studied more than 2,600 different landmarks around the United States. She wanted to know how they acknowledged white supremacy and racial injustice.

"Although white supremacy — the overt belief in the superiority of white people — was central to the creation of the U.S., the nation is deeply invested in denying its role,” explains Pulido. What the country chooses to remember -- and how it does that -- says a great deal about what is important to Americans.

What she found was this: American landmarks do not acknowledge their many connections to racial inequality and violence. That allows Americans to "forget" the country's many connections to racism and racial violence, she says.

One example in Oregon is the End of the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center in Oregon City. This museum marks the end of the 2,170-mile wagon route used by hundreds of thousands of settlers from the 1840s to the 1860s. Visitors today are greeted by tour guides walking around in clothing of the settlers. There are interactive exhibits that celebrate the daily life of settlers. However, there is no real recognition of the significant ways that the Oregon Trail destroyed Native American land and people.

"You’ll find many educational signs at the End of the Oregon Trail, but you won’t find much discussion of the violent wresting (away) of Native land, the massive displacement of tribes and the devastating diseases introduced by settlers traveling that trail," said Pulido. She explains that there is only one panel that addresses a Native woman’s experience of removal, and even that does not fully explain who forced her to move or why.

Nearly every monument across Oregon, and the entire country, is similar. They do not include the violent ways that the U.S. became a country. But, Pulido argues, racial justice in historical monuments depends on actually engaging with the truth in a meaningful way.

In Oregon, one memorial is doing a better job. It is the Homeland of the Cow Creeks Historical Marker near the Seven Rivers Casino. Indigenous people were involved in telling the story. The marker in Southern Oregon actually calls out the “forcible removal” of the Cow Creek tribe by the U.S. government. It also recognizes the introduction of infectious diseases and violence by settlers.

“The U.S. continues to be a country of intense racial conflict,” Pulido says. “One reason for this is our refusal to acknowledge the truth of our past. Racial tension will continue to plague us until we truly reckon with our history.”