I was puzzled by the arguments of Alaska historian Steve Haycox regarding why the statues of William Seward on public land in Alaska should not be removed to museums. He argued that Seward and John Quincy Adams, who earlier proposed “manifest destiny” of the (white) U.S. way of life, were “creatures of their culture, informed by its mores and assumptions, and unexceptional in their view of manifest destiny.” In other words, Seward’s despicable comments about the racial inferiority, doomed-to-extinction of Native American peoples in Oregon and California, and repeated in Sitka (1869), should be forgiven because all those white guys back then thought like that.
Not so. Thomas Jefferson wrote, “I believe the Indian then to be in body and mind equal to the whiteman.”
The logic of Professor Haycox’s argument would lead to the conclusion that Hitler was simply a product of the “culture, mores and assumptions” of Germans of his era. Hence, forgive his slaughter of Jews, honor his positive deeds with statues on public land. Racist propaganda like those of Nazis, or statements like those of Seward in Sitka about Tlingit, must be condemned. If not, one must assume agreement with those sentiments.
— Kerry Dean Feldman
UAA professor emeritus, anthropology
Anchorage
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