Palimpsest - April 2025
Displacement recounts the native history of this land, presently known as Grand Rapids, Michigan. Roughly 200 years ago Dutch and European colonizers were drawn to the Grand River, logging and clear-cutting the surrounding area to feed the demands of the booming furniture industry; in short, these first Europeans in West Michigan brought the violence of capitalism upon the land.
Over the next several decades the land would be unethically parceled off, stripped, and desecrated. In 1964 the Hopewell Native American burial mounds, known familiarly as the Norton Mounds (featured in the top half of the image) were flattened and excavated, callously used as fill dirt for nearby development. Today the once sacred land is occupied by US-131. Largely inaccessible and unmaintained lumps of dirt sit wedged between the highway and the river, serving as a gesture of White-guilt.
In Displacement, an image of the statue of Chief Noahquageshik, or “Noonday”, tribal leader of the Ottawa Nation (screen printed to the left) stands in opposition to the imposing land sale sign.Standing before the statue of Noonday in front of the GVSU John C. Kennedy Hall of Engineering, you might note the heavily White-Washed language used to recount this story of displacement inscribed in the copper plaque. Phrases such as, “American settlers”, rather than “European colonizers”, undermine the true history of sovereignty in our country.