Читать книгу Lost Worlds of 1863. Relocation and Removal of American Indians in the Central Rockies and the Greater Southwest онлайн

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The primary theme of this work has been derived from a mural painted by the Navajo artist Steven Jon Yazzie that is in the collection of the Heard Museum in downtown Phoenix, Arizona. In the year 2000, Yazzie spent more than six months creating a mural that illustrated the diaspora experience of tribal peoples in the Greater American Southwest. These tales speak of the removal and assimilation policies of the United States government (or in the case of the Yaqui, the Mexican regime of Porfirio Díaz) vis-à-vis the southwestern indigenous populations, and the resulting uprooting of indigenous peoples from land and family. The Yazzie mural covered three walls in the Ullman gallery and focused on the nineteenth century stories of the Navajo, Yaqui, and Colorado River people, as well as the boarding school period that began in 1878. Yazzie’s mural is entitled “Fear of a Red Planet: Relocation and Removal,” and was the motivating force behind the current work.

There are many ways to parcel up the past. Some historians talk about historical periods, such as the Age of Reason or the Cold War era. Others speak of centuries, generations, or decades—all terms of convenience. The most daring and enjoyable histories are those that proclaim that the course of human events centered on a particular year, with 1492 an especially appealing year. According to Louis Menand, writing in The New Yorker, these are known as one-dot histories.² Those books with one-year titles are melodramatic and somewhat ahistorical. So let me assure the reader that the one-dot theory of history does not apply in the present case.