Indian Patriots on Last Stand Hill

Abstract

This article seeks to illuminate the ways that the public history of the nineteenth-century Indian Wars continue to matter in twenty-first century formulations of the relationship between indigenous peoples of North American and the United States. It pursues this topic by focusing on a single event, the 2003 dedication of a new memorial at the Little Bighorn Battlefield commemorating the lives those who fought there. Situating the history of commemoration at the battlefield within the larger history of "Custerology," the article pays particular attention to articulations of national patriotism. Such patriotism at the Little Bighorn involves not only allegiance to the United States, but also to the specific tribal nations of the American Indians who come there. The article contends that the dedication of the Indian memorial at the Little Bighorn reveals an articulation of anti-American Americanism. Unlike forms of postnational cosmopolitanism, this kind of patriotism is thoroughly saturated by national allegiances, even if those allegiances may seem to be in logical contradiction with one another. "Indian Patriots on Last Stand Hill" unravels these forms of patriotism by attending to the speeches, ceremonies, and architecture of memorialization at the Little Bighorn Battlefield. It describes the dramas of reconciliation that were staged there in the early twentieth century, as well as the conflicts over commemoration that took place from the 1970s to the 1990s. Crucial to all of these acts is the unique texture of defeat at the Little Bighorn: The United States can claim the status of the defeated in the battle, whereas American Indian nations have the moral authority of the defeated in their longer struggles against colonization. As a corollary, the Little Bighorn is also a place where both sides claim victory—the United States in its territorial consolidation of the North American plains, and the Indian nations in the battle of the Little Bighorn itself. This peculiar configuration of victory and defeat creates the possibility for the Little Bighorn to function as a place where both Indians and non-Indians can converge to articulate the contradictions of the status of Indian nations and Indian people in the contemporary United States.