A monument to settler colonialism? David A. Tschida, ‘Rendezvous with history: Grand Portage National Monument and Minnesota’s North Shore’, in Cathy Rex, Shevaun E. Watson (eds), Public Memory, Race, and Heritage Tourism of Early America, Routledge, 2021
Abstract: Grand Portage National Monument preserves the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century site for and history of the fur trade between the Anishinaabeg and Britain’s North West Company. The Monument’s remote location means tourists’ travel experiences getting there are an important part of their total heritage tourism experience of the site. The 150-mile drive up Minnesota’s North Shore of Lake Superior is dotted with historic and popular state parks, decades-old resorts and cafes, and visible remnants of settler colonialism centered on extractive industries. This context makes this example of heritage tourism a diffuse and complex text combining Indigenous Native American culture and identity, conflicting environmental sensibilities, the Monument itself, various tourist attractions, and settler colonialism. This chapter uses cultural discourse analysis to examine tourism along the road to the Monument and the juxtaposed voyageur/fur trader and Anishinaabeg tourism narratives at the Monument, bringing points of understanding to how the Monument’s heritage narratives attempt to position the tourists and their attitudes, values, beliefs, behaviors, and memories during their visitor experiences.
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