“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. Native American historical figures have been subsumed into the US landscape via the naming customs of our European ancestors. Nicholas A. Brown and Sarah E. Kanouse use images and text in a juxtaposition that forces the viewer to think about what this means for Native Americans. Many streets and parks have been named for notable historical figures, but very few have been co-opted for business names. Makataimeshekiakiak’s English name, Black Hawk, has been used for everything from a…

Re-Collecting Black Hawk Landscape, Memory, and Power in the American Midwest Nicholas A. Brown and Sarah E. Kanouse Culture, Politics, and the Built Environment NATIVE AMERICAN STUDIES “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,…

UPP welcomes Nicholas A. Brown and Sarah E. Kanouse, authors of the forthcoming Re-Collecting Black Hawk: Landscape, Memory, and Power in the American Midwest as the first of our authors to be featured in a Q&A. UPP: What was your inspiration for Re-Collecting Black Hawk? NB: There’s no one moment that inspired the project; rather it was an organic outgrowth of our artistic and scholarly interests and quirks of personal history that all came together at the right time. I actually grew up in Madison, Wisconsin, surrounded by references to Black Hawk. As a kid I walked to Blackhawk Country…