“Some thoughts on the Hannah Duston and Columbus Statue Controversy, the Massachusetts Seal, and How We Commemorate the Past”

Christoph Strobel, Ph.D., Professor of History at University of Massachusetts, Lowell.

Symbols that commemorate the past have become a controversial topic in recent years. From the confederate flag, to civil war statues, to the naming of military bases, these issues are in the news. In Massachusetts, the State Seal, Haverhill’s Hannah Duston and Boston’s Christopher Columbus statues have been local flashpoints on how we commemorate history. We will use the Duston, Columbus, and Seal controversy as a launching pad to explore the history of survival of the Indigenous peoples of New England. This history stands diametrically opposed to the imagined Native American past that the seal, the statues, and mainstream popular mainstream myths celebrate.

https://zoom.us/j/98374293833

Prof. Strobel is the author of Native Americans of New England, The Global Atlantic 1400–1900, The Testing Grounds of Modern Empire, co-author with Alice Nash of Daily Life of Native Americans from Post-Columbian through Nineteenth-Century America, and he has published three books on immigration. Christoph’s scholarly essays appear in various academic journals and edited collections.