Monuments to Absence

This ambitious study analyzes the memorialization of the Cherokee Trail of Tears from the southeastern United States to Oklahoma, spanning the period from the 1930s into the twenty-first century. Andrew Denson tells the story of how memory was created and how Cherokee history was remade into southern white history. Monuments to Absence adds to the growing literature on commemoration in service to tourism. Denson argues convincingly that commemoration of Cherokee removal with concomitant apologies has been used to provide southern whites moral high ground regarding race relations. Focusing on the Cherokee past provided a way to think about race relations—which white southerners viewed in binary terms—that excluded American Indians from a place in contemporary southern society. The author tells us: The Trail of Tears remains a safe and settled topic among non-Indians, one that allows white Americans to acknowledge suffering and injustice in the national past without having to reconsider much of anything in the present. (p. 194

Archaeology · Cherokee · CONTEST · Injustice · Political science · White (mutation · Archaeology and Natural History · History · Indigenous Health, Education, and Rights · Indigenous Studies and Ecology · Law