Indigenous Activism in the Midwest: Refusal, Resurgence, and Resisting Settler Colonialism

In Indigenous Activism in the Midwest: Refusal, Resurgence, and Resisting Settler Colonialism, Margret McCue-Enser examines how Minnesota Indigenous activists use public memory sites to interrupt and challenge the dominant narrative of place. She explores how Indigenous activism reveals and disrupts material, discursive, and performative rhetorics of settler colonialism. This work cultivates the ground between rhetorical studies of place and space and Indigenous studies in which place is central to Indigeneity and activism. Using largely in situ analysis and drawing on Indigenous and rhetorical scholarship as well as Indigenous and mainstream press, the analysis focuses on sites such as an outdoor art installation, a historic settlers’ village, centennial and sesquicentennial farms, and a celebrated military fort.