What a DHS post says about white womanhood and the American empire today

“There is a kind of deliberate deception here which is really cynical and really dangerous,” a historian told 19.

Published by the 19th

Last week, the official Social media accounts From the Ministry of Internal Security has moved away from a series of action plans from secretary Kristi Noem and various law enforcement agents POST A PAINT of the 19th century.

“American progress” represent A floating white woman leading the charge for family properties and technological progress, raising buffaloes and natives off Western land.

The table, completed in 1872 by John Gast, was exhibited at the Autry Museum of the American West, nestled in the hills of Los Angeles. During the weekend, the museum Festivities organized for national cowboy and cowgirl day, during which Stephen Aron, director of the museum, invited the 19th to visit and discuss what this painting represents on America, the Empire and the white woman.

The image of “American Progress” has tended since it appeared on DHS ‘social networks on July 23 with legend: “a heritage of which he is proud, a homeland is worth defending”. Painting is a deviation from the recent content on the official DHS Instagram page, which since the inauguration of Trump has become a collection of memes, vintage inspiring propaganda posters and very produced Media threshing videos police officers.

In the other, the small painting is part of a large table of wild canvas living room, representing the American West as a fertile land to conquer. People are secondary or absent in most works, with little Exceptions. Next to “American Progress” is a large portrait Of three white children and a dog, showing the type of life, the colonists emptied in pursuit of manifest destiny.

In the reality of Los Angeles, where the other is located, the city was zero for the federal immigration program of the Trump administration, which focused on a particular version of “Homeland’s Heritage” – one about Protect white women And Families.

Founded in 1988 by Gene and Jackie Autry to share the heritage and heritage of the American West, the museum combines art, historical collections and cultural events. Center of its mission is to bring together “the stories of all the peoples of the American West”.

This is illustrated by the arrangement of the gallery where “American Progress” lives. Aron underlines that three main covers of massive Navajo are displayed in the room like any other type of landscape. In the middle of the room is a huge sculpture, Known as “dark founded” by the third generation artist of Santa Clara Pueblo Rose B. Simpson.

“American progress” was acquired after being displayed as part of a Controversial exhibition of 1991 At the Smithsonian Museum of Art which sought to reinterpret the art of the American West with a new context on conquest and colonization. Several legislators criticized the exhibition as openly political and have threatened to finance the Washington cultural institution, DC, in retaliation. Critics and patrons estimated that unnecessarily bad exposure the history of America – a clear contrast to the brilliant bundle of progress represented in Gast play.

It is a reaction that resonates through American politics today, as the Trump administration considers it Remove books from slavery national parks, erasure of factual information American story “denigrate” And Rename a warship Honor LGBTQ activist + Harvey Milk. Trump’s executive orders seek to retreat the mentions of gender, Racial and ethnic diversity of the federal government.

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The experts of The Autry have clearly indicated that the “heritage” of the H-Hot celebrated in the legend of the DHS is a Matryoshka Romanticization doll. Painting represents three waves of “American progress”, with a floating white woman carrying “The Star of Empire” which expelled indigenous peoples and animals outside the frame, paving the way for minors and homesteaders. He returned to the 1840s through the eyes of post-civil war, when the West represented a means of sewing the nation and providing a renaissance, Aron told the 19th.

In order for white Americans to divide into the West, they had to disturb a diverse group of natives, Spanish and Mexicans. And the main symbol – and the weapon – of the colony was the white family, said Virginia Scharff, an eminent Emerita professor at the University of New Mexico and president of Western history to the others.

“The presence of white women is absolutely essential to the idea of permanent occupation of formerly native land by the United States and in the cement of legitimacy to occupy these lands,” said Scharff. White men first went west, to work on railways or as minors, but they did not start to occupy the land significantly.

And in Gast’s painting, white femininity is looming – literally. Dressed in classic white, the passive figure brings light to the west; Unlike the naked woman, she embodies decency and civility.

As this spectrum of “progress” claimed new states in the mid -1800s, women’s rights diverged on the basis of racial and ethnic history. “There were always women who existed there before the arrival of the Americans, who had different ideas of femininity, different roles in their communities, who often attacked when a new government was created,” Carolyn Brucken, principal conservative to The Autry, said during a telephone call.

Mexican women had more rights than American women in the East, including the ability to have goods, said Brucken. Aboriginal women, who participated in public councils through a myriad of tribal traditions, have been removed from ancestral land and various cultural ideals were forced to.

At the same time, the floating symbolic woman of Gast erases the very real contributions of women on the border. “You miss how much women were active agents of change in the West,” said Brucken. They fought for their rights and communities – Wyoming was the first state to legalize the suffrage of women in 1869. Contrary to the resurgence of traditional gender roles today, gender roles could be more fluid in border communities with limited resources, and women have slowly gained independence thanks to the work and wider responsibilities.

Scharff considers the strategic deployment of “American progression” painting as deeply insidious. “The Ministry of Internal Security does not send slightly dressed white women,” she said, “but instead of guys with firearms and tires and masks to attract street people.”

“There is a kind of deliberate deception here which is really cynical and really dangerous, in my opinion.”

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The deputy secretary of the DHS, Tricia McLaughlin, told the 19th in a press release that the agency “honors works of art which celebrates the heritage and the history of America”. She added: “If the media need a history lesson on the courageous men and women who opened the trails and forged this republic of sweat of their front, we are happy to send them a history manual.”

But in the other, the context is everything. “We do everything we can, both in physical space and also when we do an interpretation work, to try to contextualize this type of art in American history,” said Scharff.

She considers that Simpson “Witness,” which is generally displayed alongside “American Progress”, to be the most powerful piece in the whole collection. “It speaks to people who are made invisible, cut and driven out of the edge of the canvas by this type of art, but they are still there,” she said. “Their presence is undeniable if you look.”

When Simpson’s work was displayed in a 18th century house, the artist commented to be “out of words”.

“There were times when I wanted to speak only to people who could understand my work”, “ Simpson said in an interview. “However, if my sculptures are out of words, they actually work harder than if they are surrounded by my context. I want my sculptures to enter difficult places; They are intended to infiltrate. “

The “witness” was temporarily replaced by his sculpture which accompanies him “to the earth”, a figure of crouching clay on the ground with black wings reaching the ceiling. “Witness” was transferred to the ground below as part of a temporary exposure called “Future imaginary: native art, fashion, technology.”

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Upstairs, explains Aron, art is supposed to recall customers of the time before the mythologized start by painters like Gast. The “future imaginary” are supposed to show that indigenous history is not only in the past, but also that there is a gift and a future.

In its temporary environment, “witness” of the towers above Aron. He approached his usual placement While standing before the figure of post-apocalyptic clay. “Control the paintings of manifesto of the detine of destiny, I think, if not as a reprimand, then at least as a reminder of the fatherland, whose inheritance, which is the first and which is still there,” he said.