“To Preserve Unimpaired”: The Presidency, National Parks, and the Preservation of the U.S. Settler Colonialist State

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Abstract Control of time is critical to the maintenance of settler colonial states. In the United States, which relies on linear conceptions of time, time is treated as moving forward, which implies a specific view of the national past. It also moves backward, which proscribes a particular understanding of future possibilities. In both cases, time is mobilized to produce political stasis, rendering it very difficult to question settler colonialist ideologies and possession of land. Unsettling the U.S. settler colonial state requires a different conception of time and different temporalities.