There's an interesting new book out about Black Hawk's appropriation by American culture in the midwest for those that are interested. It's called Re-Collecting Black Hawk:
Re-Collecting Black Hawk
Landscape, Memory, and Power in the American Midwest
Brown, Nicholas, Kanouse, Sarah
The name Black Hawk permeates the built environment in the upper Midwestern United States. It has been appropriated for everything from fitness clubs to used car dealerships. Re-Collecting Black Hawk examines the phenomena of this appropriation in the physical landscape, and the deeply rooted sentiments it evokes among Native Americans and descendants of European settlers. Nearly 170 original photographs are presented and juxtaposed with texts that reveal and complicate the significance of the imagery. Contributors include tribal officials, scholars, activists, and others.
Nicholas Brown is a visiting assistant professor in the American Indian and Native Studies program at the University of Iowa.
Sarah Kanouse is an associate professor in the school of art and art history at the University of Iowa.
"Re-Collecting Black Hawk puts forth a provocative and thorough examination of how a historical Sac and Fox leader has been reduced to a footnote. . . . As an educational tool, [it] could make a formidable text for US history studies at the university level, particularly in discussions of how the dominant European culture of the US has all but buried the existence of peoples who were on the North American continent before Europeans arrived. Its other, equally vital use (if not more so to the Sac and Fox people) is in gathering up information about the actual Black Hawk and returning it to its real-life context. It’s a laudable effort that succeeds very well."—Foreword Reviews
“The decade’s smartest and most destabilizing book on Indians, Americans, amnesia, and memory. This book unsettles conventional wisdom of all kinds. Straightforward images document the massive and mysterious project by citizens of Iowa, Wisconsin, and Illinois to inscribe the name of a nineteenth century Indian leader on a staggering variety of stores, parks, bars, nursing homes, teams, and schools. An instant classic, in the tradition of Michael Lesy’s Wisconsin Death Trip.”—Paul Chaat Smith, author of Everything You Know about Indians Is Wrong
“Re-Collecting Black Hawk is an important and exciting work of cultural geography and Native studies. Featuring a fascinating photo-essay and foregrounding the voices of tribal administrators, Native scholars and artists, this innovative book will be accessible and valuable to a diverse range of readers interested in memory and landscape in the American Midwest.”—Bill Anthes, Pitzer College, The Claremont Colleges
“Through an original and highly provocative pairing of image and text, Brown and Kanouse explore the complicated legacy of white colonization of an indigenous world. Now called the American Midwest, that world bears the imprint of its previous inhabitants as filtered through the conquerors. The book’s brilliance resides in the incessant questioning of that legacy—why it’s selectively remembered and forgotten. Re-Collecting Black Hawk will change how readers make their own memories of this place.”—Steven Hoelscher, University of Texas at Austin
