Graduation Year
2023
Document Type
Thesis
Degree
M.A.
Degree Name
Master of Arts (M.A.)
Degree Granting Department
History
Major Professor
Philip Levy, Ph.D.
Committee Member
Brian Connolly, Ph.D.
Committee Member
K. Stephen Prince, Ph.D.
Keywords
commemoration, memory, sexual violence, Survivors Memorial
Abstract
Dedicated in Minneapolis in October 2020, the Survivors Memorial became the first permanent memorial to survivors of sexual violence in the United States. However, as my research reveals, sexual violence has long been a part of the commemorative landscape in northeast Minneapolis. Whereas the Survivors Memorial explicitly commemorates survivors of sexual violence, a much older site, the 1936 Pioneers Monument - commemorates sexual violence through silence. This thesis argues that with the building and dedication of the Survivors Memorial, a different memory than the one embodied within the Pioneers Monument begins to take shape. An older narrative of peaceful conquest and passive Native encounters with white settlers is no longer tenable. Transformed into a more complex and painful version of memory and historical events, the Survivors Memorial and its creation, dedication, and reception helps to undo the layers of silence and misdirection present in the same processes of the Pioneers Monument. Intertwining their stories illuminates how the commemorative landscape in Minneapolis has changed over time, from one of silence, erasure, and forgetting, to one that explicitly reckons with sexual violence enacted against Native and other marginalized peoples historically and contemporarily.
Scholar Commons Citation
Roy, Alissa, ""Emerging and Submerging": Silence, Commemoration, and Sexual Violence in Minneapolis" (2023). USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/etd/9922
