Remembering to forget: Lewis and Clark and native Americans in Yellowstone

Abstract

“Remembering to Forget” enacts a critical cultural politics concerning the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804–1806, Lewis and Clark's relations with Native Americans in the greater Yellowstone region, and the bicentennial commemoration of that presence in 2003 and 2004. I examine the place of Lewis and Clark in our national imagination. This is a fractured, revisionist, personal history, an attempt at a personal mythology that contests the rhetorical uses of nature, discovery, and science for political, patriotic purposes.

Keywords:

• Postcolonial Mythology
• Performance Ethnography
• Critical Race Theory
• Native Americans

Notes

Norman K. Denzin is College of Communications Scholar and Distinguished Professor of Communications, Sociology, and Humanities, at the University of Illinois, Urbana‐Champaign. His most recent book is Performance Ethnography: Critical Pedagogy and the Politics of Culture (Sage, 2003). He is the editor of Cultural Studies—Critical Methodologies. Correspondence to: Norman Denzin, Institute of Communications Research, University of Illinois at Urbana‐Champaign, 228 Gregory Hall, 810 South Wright Street, Urbana, IL 61801, USA. Email: n‐[email protected]

The lines that are spoken are all taken from published texts. I have imposed a narrative order upon them.

The NEWSREEL and THE CAMERA EYE are Dos Passos's terms, The NEWSREEL is his method for incorporating current events, stories, advertisements and newsworthy items into his text. It could also be called NEWS, or NEWS or MEDIA STORY/EVENT. The camera eye is his method of referencing a third‐person perspective or interpretation of the events at hand. I am using the camera eye to reference both first‐ and third‐person interpretations.

In 1796, the Yellowstone River is known as the “Rock or Crow River. In 1797, it appears on a map as R. des Roches Jaunes—Yellowstone, in 1800 as the Rio Amarillo in the late 1700s as the Elk, the Crow or Yellow Rock in 1804 and the Yellow Stone in 1805 (see Jackson, 1987, p. 122; also Coues, 1893, p. 283; De Voto, 1953, p. 101).

This involves a reading of the Lewis and Clark journals and their various editions, starting with Biddle (1814/1962), moving to Coues (1893), Thwaites (1904–05/1969), Jackson (1962), and Mouton (1988–2001; 2003). Other accounts include those of John Whitehouse, John Ordway, Patrick Gass and Charles Floyd (on these supplemental journals see Slaughter, 2003, p. 54; also Clarke, 2002; on reading the various versions of the originals, see the essays in Ronda, 1997; also DeVoto, 1953; Jackson, 1987; Slaughter, 2003, pp. 47–64). In addition to these sources, there is Ken Burns's 1997 documentary, Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery; a Lewis and Clark newsletter, websites, and a “minor academic industry of conference proceedings, edited books, journal articles and monographs written on the expedition” (Slaughter, 2003, p. xiv).

Among the many other myths are those that read the men as gifted ethnographers and linguists, as epic figures, as adventurers, heroes of a young nation, men who overcame great obstacles to blaze a path through an uncharted frontier, and proto‐ecologists who speak to us today (see Spence, 2003 for a review).

Depending on accommodations, prices range from $3,750 to $2,390.

Jeffersonian constitutional democracy presumes that all white men are created equal, and have the natural, inalienable self‐determining rights of self‐governance, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, the right to grant lands, and sovereign authority over those lands (Williams, 1997, pp. 57–8, 61). Jeffersonian democracy authorized the colonization of Native Americans.

Benjamin was writing in Germany before WW II. I can make the case that Jeffersonian democracy was also fascist. Fascism: A conservative, extreme right‐wing political, economic and socio‐legal state formation characterized by authoritarian forms of government, extreme nationalism, manufactured consent at key levels of public opinion, racism, a large military–industrial complex, foreign aggressiveness, state‐supported corporate capitalism, state‐sponsored violence, tendencies toward an “Orwellian condition of perpetual war … [and] a national security state in which intelligence agencies and the military replace publicly elected officials in deciding national priorities.”

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Norman K. Denzin

Norman K. Denzin is College of Communications Scholar and Distinguished Professor of Communications, Sociology, and Humanities, at the University of Illinois, Urbana‐Champaign. His most recent book is Performance Ethnography: Critical Pedagogy and the Politics of Culture (Sage, 2003). He is the editor of Cultural Studies—Critical Methodologies. Correspondence to: Norman Denzin, Institute of Communications Research, University of Illinois at Urbana‐Champaign, 228 Gregory Hall, 810 South Wright Street, Urbana, IL 61801, USA. Email: n‐[email protected]