Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Indiana’s state park system developed as a result of state centennial celebrations in 1916. Government officials created state parks as a permanent memorial that glorified the Hoosier pioneer spirit, which celebrated actions of white colonists as they confronted challenges of the new industrial twentieth century. However, this memorialization erased the Lenni Lenape, Miami, Potawatomi, and Shawnee tribes played in the state’s history. This paper analyzes the Indiana statehood centennial celebrations as sites of erasure of Native American contributions to state and national history. It examines how Richard Lieber, the founder of the parks system, and others built the state park system to understand the ways individual state parks commemorated that Hoosier pioneer spirit at the expense of Native American voices. Turkey Run, McCormick’s Creek, Clifty Falls, Indiana Dunes, Pokagon, Spring Mill, and Lincoln State Parks are critiqued in this analysis to illustrate how each park encompasses and presents the story of colonization.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:IUPUI/oai:scholarworks.iupui.edu:1805/25311 |
| Date | 02 1900 |
| Creators | Receveur, Garrett Wayne |
| Contributors | Guiliano, Jennifer, Shrum, Rebecca, Barrows, Robert |
| Source Sets | Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Rights | Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ |
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