Displacing the displacer portrayed as a displacer: Wil Sahar Patrick, Reuben Rose-Redwood, CindyAnn Rose-Redwood, ‘Dis-Placing White Supremacy: Intersections of Black and Indigenous Struggles in the Removal of the Roosevelt Statue at the American Museum of Natural History’, in Bronwyn Carlson, Terri Farrelly (eds), The Palgrave Handbook on Rethinking Colonial Commemorations, Palgrave, 2023, pp 437–459 | settler colonial studies blog

Displacing the displacer portrayed as a displacer: Wil Sahar Patrick, Reuben Rose-Redwood, CindyAnn Rose-Redwood, ‘Dis-Placing White Supremacy: Intersections of Black and Indigenous Struggles in the Removal of the Roosevelt Statue at the American Museum of Natural History’, in Bronwyn Carlson, Terri Farrelly (eds), The Palgrave Handbook on Rethinking Colonial Commemorations, Palgrave, 2023, pp 437–459

04Jul23

Abstract: The removal of monuments and the renaming of places have become major flashpoints of social and political contestation over the past decade. In the United States, there has been a surge in the removal of neo-Confederate statues, monuments and place names as well as a dethroning of statues of Christopher Columbus and other prominent figures who organised and committed Indigenous genocide. The iconoclasms of these two movements—for the removal of anti-Black and anti-Indigenous monuments—are often portrayed as separate struggles. However, this clean delineation of the commemorative landscape between those features that embody anti-Blackness and anti-Indigeneity obscures how both are informed by the ideology of white supremacy and emplace it in the built environment. Campaigns for the removal of monumental objects such as the Equestrian Statue of Theodore Roosevelt outside the American Museum of Natural History in New York demonstrate the intersectionality of commemorative struggles and the potential for solidarity between Black and Indigenous peoples. While recognising the distinct struggles of Black and Indigenous communities, this chapter argues that the intimacies, resonances and collaborations to dismantle white supremacy and settler-colonial monumentality can open spaces to nurture the possibilities for intersectional solidarity.

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