Sunday, April 10, 2022

celebrating Joseph Medicine Crow


Sometimes, USC gets it more or less right - and one of those things has been with the renaming of the VKC building (the Von Kleinsmid Center) - which is where Art History was located when I arrived at USC. and so for a few years, till we moved, I cringed, or worse, to be working in a building named after a horrific eugenicist.  But USC has seen the error of its ways, and VKC is about - tomorrow - to be formally renamed after Joseph Medicine Crow, an alum, but more than that: born in 1913 (he died in 2016), he heard first hand testimony from those who fought in the Battle of Little Big Horn.  And it was great that lots of his family were there tonight - it was one of those rare occasions at USC that I felt that what we were celebrating actually had some connection with my scholarship, even if it's been a while since I've worked centrally on Native American stuff, feeling uneasy about scholarly colonization.  But ... this is still part of my scholarly historical language, and it was great to be there tonight.

 

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