ABSTRACT
Memory is a three-act play that enacts a critical cultural politics concerning Native-Americans and the bicentennial commemoration of the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804-1806 in the greater Yellowstone region in 2003 and 2004 (see Denzin 2003, 2004, 2005; Shay 2004; Webb 2004; Zellar 2004).2 The object of my inquiry, the Lewis and Clark expedition, comprises a particular intersection of forces, discourses, and institutions (Foucault 1980). These contradictory forces come together in 2003-2004 to produce a certain set of effects, the commemoration itself. In making sense of Lewis and Clark, their place in this current historical moment and their relations with Native-Americans, I follow Benjamin’s (1983) advice about writing history. Drawing on newspaper accounts, popular texts, and offi cial and unoffi cial documents, Benjamin’s histories consist of a series of quotations placed side by side. A literary montage is produced, a decentered narrative, a multivoiced experimental text with voices and speakers speaking back and forth, often past one another (Benjamin 1999: 460).
