Commemoration or Commiseration: How to Represent America Before it was America
Holly Kilgore HIS 5067 Commemoration of Commiseration: Representing America Before America Lisa Blee’s, Monumental Mobility: The Memory Work of Massasoit studies the question of history versus memory regarding the earliest foundations of what would become the United States. Blee creates a compelling narrative, featuring voices from Wampanoag Nation, descendants of the Indigenous peoples that encountered the Pilgrims in Plymouth. The narrative follows a linear line of ‘storytelling’, while creating factual links with cities and states outside of Plymouth, Massachusetts, and the broad New England landscape. Blee’s work is groundbreaking and sets the stage for an up-to-date review of the impact of these statues and historic homes, these visual models of remembrance and commemoration. One point that came to mind while reading: for Indigenous docents at the Plimoth Plantation, who daily had to relive the trauma through reenactment, a process “…which demands a great deal of patience ...