Decolonizing the Wakarusa Museum: The Role of Public Education and Forced Displacement Within the Settler Colonial Structure

Abstract

The Wakarusa River Valley Heritage Museum aims to preserve, collect, and display the history of the Wakarusa River Valley before the construction of Clinton Lake. However, Indigenous perspectives and Native voices have been omitted from the historical narrative. To this day, the Wakarusa Museum does not acknowledge the Native American history that was submerged beneath Clinton Lake. As a result, the Wakarusa Museum is an institution of colonization. This thesis argues that the Wakarusa Museum exemplifies the consequences of living under a settler colonial empire by exposing two foundational pillars of settler colonialism: public education and forced displacement.