The Statues that Got to Me

Published in the Idaho State Journal on July 18, 2021  

This week in Charlottesville, Virginia, three statues were removed from prominent public places. I knew about the first two when I sat down to write this piece, but I learned about the third when I turned to the internet to clarify a few details.

The first two were statues of Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. The site of Lee’s statue is where the2017 Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally was held and where protester Heather Heyer was killed after a Nazi enthusiast drove into a crowd of counter-protesters. The third statue that was removed surprised me. It was a statue of Lewis and Clark along with Sacajawea.

Why in the heck was that removed? My quest to find out why led me down a rabbit hole of internet research that concluded with an hour-long phone call with a woman in Fort Hall named Rose Ann Abrahamson. Rose Ann is Sacajawea’s great-great-great niece. More on her in a minute.

I haven’t kept up with every statue across our country that has been removed, relocated or is the focal point of such talks, but my original intent in this piece was to mention the Confederate statues in Charlottesville as a lead-in to discuss two other statues in recent years that got to me. After learning about the Sacajawea statue in Charlottesville, however, now there are three - three statues in particular that lead me to be a solid proponent of these discussions at local and national levels about who we honor and how.

The first statue that got to me was that of Joe Paterno on the Penn State campus. Paterno began coaching at Penn State in 1966. A seven-foot bronze statue of him was erected on c in 2001, and he was the winningest coach in NCAA Division I history at the time of his dismissal in 2011. His statue was removed in 2012 in response to his lack of response when he learned that one of his coaches was molesting boys in the school locker room.  

The former president of Penn State, Rodney Erickson, said at the time “were it to remain, the statue will be a recurring wound to the multitude of individuals across the nation and beyond who have been the victims of child abuse.” And not only that, it would have entailed a school and community continuing to honor someone whose negligence hurt children at their institution. 

The second statue that got to me was that of J. Marion Sims in Central Park across from the New York Academy of Medicine. I had never heard of him at the time of the statues removal in 2018. When I read a headline that an old doctor’s statue was being removed, I thought for sure these efforts were about to spin out of control - until I explored the Wikipedia tributaries for information on James Marion Sims and found dozens of articles after that. I was horrified. 

 

Sims has been called the “Father of Gynecology” for groundbreaking surgical treatments and inventions, but his success came through experimentation on enslaved women without the use of anesthesia. His “work” was raw torture, sanctioned and encouraged by our society at that time. I felt aches and twinges as I read in detail what he did to women. Black women. Although the New York statue has been relocated, there are still others of him prominently displayed in our country showcasing Sims as a dignified doctor rather than the medical monster he was. How long will they stay? 

The third taken-down statue that got to me is the one I have only known about for six hours at the time of this writing: the Lewis and Clark statue with Sacajawea located in Charlottesville. Or should I be calling it the Sacajawea statue with Lewis and Clark?

Descendants of Sacajawea, including Rose Ann who I mentioned earlier, visited Charlottesville in 2019 to talk with city officials in person about Sacajawea’s life and how she is portrayed in the statue. Lewis and Clark are featured standing tall and looking outward while Sacajawea is crouching and looking at the ground. “Cowering” and “subservient” were words that Rose Ann used. As I searched the web for photographs at varying angles to form my own opinion, I came to see and feel why keeping this statue as a centerpiece of the city is problematic.

 

Lewis and Clark are depicted noble and proud. Sacajawea isn’t. It isn’t that the statue is offensive; it is arguably inaccurate. Here in the West, we’ve developed a great regard for Sacajawea as an integral part of that expedition. The statue in Charlottesville doesn’t do her justice. It doesn’t do history justice. Talks are ongoing to relocate the Sacajawea statue to the Lewis and Clark Exploratory Center in Charlottesville where it can be given context and used to educate the public. 

Each of these statues got to me because I feel the human elements of why they needed to be removed or relocated. I feel an extra disgust at Paterno’s statue from being the child of a child protection worker. I feel an extra repulsion in Sims statue from being a woman, and I feel an extra dismay entwined in the Lewis and Clark and Sacajawea statue with that particular representation of Sacajawea because of how I’ve come to learn about and revere her in southeast Idaho.  

I welcome this dialogue in our nation about who we honor and how.  Remembering and honoring are completely different, and how we go about each of those speaks to who we are, who we have been and who we want to be.

 

Stock photo of Charlottesville statue