Historicizing Memory & Sacred Geography

JARED FARMER Historicizing Memory & Sacred Geography Speech given at the O. C. Tanner Symposium “Religion and Culture: Spiritual Imperatives in Contemporary American Life,” Utah State University, November 3, 2004. I’m here representing the discipline of history. I’m a historian of American landscapes. Most of my work concerns the relationship between natural landforms and cultural values. Today I’ll talk a bit about how sacred places function as memory sites. To do this I’ll use some Native American and Mormon examples. But first I need to go through some definitions. I need to tell you what historians mean when they use terms like “memory site,” “collective memory,” “history,” and “the past.” The past is everything that has happened: the totality of time until exactly right now. No one save an omniscient god could know the past in its entirety. It’s inconceivably vast. As humans, we cannot know the past; instead, we relate to it. Perhaps the best defense of this pedagogy comes from We gain a sense of the past using means of relation. Two of educational psychologist Sam Wineburg: the oldest means are storytelling and ceremony. These are In its deepest forms, historical thinking is neither a natural group activities. When groups create a sense of the past, that process nor something that springs automatically from shared sense can be called collective memory. Nowadays, each psychological development. Its achievement actually goes of us belongs to multiple groups; hence we have multiple, against the grain of how we ordinarily think, one of the overlapping collective memories. The primary group remains reasons why it is much easier to learn names, dates and the family. Other formal groups include nations and churches, stories than it is to change the fundamental mental as well as alumni associations, professional societies, and structures we use to grasp the meaning of the past . Of the fraternal organizations. Some large-scale groups lack subjects in the secular curriculum it does the best in teaching membership rolls; they are loosely defined by demography, those virtues once reserved for theology—the virtue of politics, or consumerism. Examples include the Baby Boom humility, in the face of our limits to know; and the virtue of generation, the Vietnam generation, the Nintendo generation. awe, in the face of the expanse of human [experience]. In our present moment, media corporations exert a deep influence on collective memory. For instance, our shared Before historians make judgments or interpretations, they sense of the Sixties can no longer be disentangled from TV spend months or years gathering evidence. It’s a craft. and Hollywood images about the Sixties. Whenever possible, historians track down primary sources— preferably first-hand evidence created at the time in question. In the United States, collective memory is big business. And But even primary sources must be read skeptically. for good reason. Americans love their past. They pour a Documents may contain errors, lies, or biases. Sources must staggering amount of time and money into memory-building be triangulated; they must be weighed against each other. activities like genealogy, re-enactment, and heritage tourism. Many sources are baffling. Their meaning isn’t evident to us But this love does not, I’m sad to say, extend to history. Most for the simple reason that we weren’t the intended audience. Americans have no use for my discipline. Only with context does some of the meaning become History is not the past. History is simply one more means for apparent. Historians obsessively search for context, yet they relating to the past. But unlike the other means, this one has often find a void. In their interpretations, then, historians been professionalized. History is a set of professional rules for must account for the silences and absences in the record. But thinking about the past. It requires academic training. they cannot fill in the blanks or re-order the data. They must 2 use the existing evidence in the proper sequence according to such claims at face value. But they also can’t help but the linear flow of time. historicize the people making the claims. From the historian’s point of view, particular places are revered by particular In short, history is different than collective memory. Indeed, people for particular reasons at particular times. they’re somewhat at odds. One is professional, the other is popular. One is descriptive and analytical; the other is So sacred places may not be timeless, but they do often relate evocative and emotional. History calls attention to the to the origins of time. Many indigenous creation stories name strangeness of the past; memory makes the past seem specific landforms. The world began right here, the stories familiar. Collective memory can be built on faith; history say. In Native America, indigenous groups lived or continue to cannot. It would be easy for historians to dismiss or debunk live about their mythic geographies—their holy lands. all group memories, but that would miss the point. Our job is Jerusalem of course offers the most famous examples of the to historicize them. Historians treat group memories like any connections between mythology, memory, and place. Places other cultural phenomena: they begin at some point; they and place-names like the Temple Mount and Gethsemane change over time; and they end—or will end—at some point. evoke powerful group memories. The aura of belief around Explaining why is the historian’s job. sites like the Garden Tomb reinforces a shared sense of the To do this historians tend to focus on emblems—those special past that is frankly more powerful than any work of history. stories, songs, images, and so on, that have come to symbolize The Holy Land is particularly instructive because it shows that a moment in the past. Emblematic places are another rich geographies—just like memories—can be contested. The source. We call them memory sites. These are places where Dome of the Rock has multiple competing meanings based on the past and the present collapse into each other. Examples irreconcilable collective memories. include mausoleums, museums, and monuments. But rural The Judeo-Christian tradition of sacred geography landscapes and natural landforms can be memory sites too. encompasses built landscapes (like temples and cemeteries) Consider the orchards at Gettysburg or the beaches at as well as natural landforms (like springs and mountains). Normandy. Yahweh met Abraham on Mt. Moriah, Moses on Mt. Sinai, Many—though not all—memory sites are also sacred places. and Elijah on Mt. Carmel. But holy mountains are hardly Unlike the other terms I’ve used, “sacred place” does not have restricted to Palestine. In North America, the most important an academic definition. In my mind, if a group of people medicine wheel sits atop a peak in the Bighorn Range. In the believes a place is sacred, it’s sacred. Historians try to accept Black Hills region, both Bear Lodge Butte (in Wyoming) and 3 Bear Butte (in South Dakota) possess cosmic significance to which are sacralized with identical dedication ceremonies. In many Indian groups. One of these groups, the Kiowa, also some Native American cultures, all rock art sites or all springs venerates Rainy Mountain in Oklahoma. Four peaks for the or all caves possess some spiritual power. But the most four cardinal directions mark the limits of Dinétah common category is the specifically sacred: Something took (Navajoland); the southern mountain, Mt. Taylor, is also place here to make this once-ordinary site extraordinary and sacred within Acoma, Laguna, and Zuni cultures. Their hallowed. These sites derive their power from the past. They Puebloan cousins, the Tewas, have their own four cardinal are by nature memory sites. You could call them sacred peaks. Hopis look with reverence at the San Francisco Peaks historical markers. They remind people that a vision north of Flagstaff. The creation story of the Tohono O’odham happened here. An important ceremony took place here. involves the stunning Baboquivari Peak west of Tucson. In the Someone important died here. Pacific Northwest, the great volcanoes of the Cascade Range Death sites—especially scenes of mass murder—often become figure into many Native mythologies. Though there’s no sacred memory sites. Violence can be creative as well as historical evidence that any peak in the Wasatch held spiritual destructive: it tears groups apart and brings them together. significance to Numic peoples, Sleeping Ute Mountain in Sand Creek, Colorado—site in 1864 of the second worst Colorado has an age-old place in Ute cosmology. massacre committed by U.S. troops against Indians—is now a It’s important here to point out that not all sacred places are sacred place for many tribes. The site of the worst massacre— equally sacred. Some are tabooed, unapproachable. Some are located here in this very valley—is sacred to Northern suited for ceremonial purposes only. Others are multi-use. Shoshones. But the Bear River Massacre site is unknown to Ute Mountain Utes use their sacred mountain for family the majority of people who live in Cache Valley. Sacred picnics as well as tribal ceremonies. memory sites that are universally honored are rare, maybe non-existent. Here in the United States, the closest sites are According to anthropologist Linea Sundstrom, sacred places scenes of nationalized tragedy, notably Gettysburg, Oklahoma break down into three categories of perception. A small City, and now lower Manhattan. number of places—all of them natural landforms—are intrinsically sacred. That is, people revere them for being one These place-names, as much as the places themselves, serve of a kind and beyond compare. Bear Lodge Butte—a Native as repositories of memory.

Load more