Struggling Over the Memory of Sand Creek

For more than a century and a half, the Sand Creek Massacre has been at the center of struggles over history and memory in the American West: from the government investigations launched in the massacre’s immediate aftermath; to the work of so-called Indian reformers, including Helen Hunt Jackson, writing late in the nineteenth century; to memorials erected in Colorado at the turn of the twentieth century and during the era of the Cold War; to the impact of popular histories, like Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee; to the recently opened Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site. Ari Kelman will discuss the meaning and impact of the longstanding fight to shape and control memories of Sand Creek.

Ari Kelman is the McCabe Greer Professor of History at Penn State University, where he teaches a wide range of courses, including on the Civil War and Reconstruction, the politics of memory, environmental history, Native American history, and America in the 1960s.