Valley of Litter - Collective Memory in Decay in the Arkansas Ozarks
Channel: Ozarkansawyer Productions
Date: 24/06/2021

This was a presentation I gave at the June 2021 Arkansas Historical Association Conference. The following paragraphs are the introductory script I read at the online conference before playing the video:


"Howdy folks! This presentation arose from my interest in the limits of collective memory, and the processes by which it decays when there is no one left to maintain it. Thus, my focus on litter through the ages - those objects that human beings abandon to forget.


"I found every object in the following video within a few miles of my home in the northern part of Crawford County, set among the woods and roads of the Ozark-St. Francis National Forest, itself here set among the ruins of a 19th-century village known variously as Londontown, Eads, or Rosedale (depending on which member of the Masonic Lodge you asked), with their hamlet itself set among the hills and streams of territory briefly and imperiously set aside for the displaced Cherokee by America’s early 19th-century White administrators following the removal of the Osage, who were themselves the latest in a long line of indigenous denizens of these verdant valleys for generations stretching back into the fathoms of the past.


"In creating this video, I found that conventional historical inquiry - while useful for establishing different contexts for individual items - was more apt to reveal further holes in collective memory as it concerns this particular valley. Crawford County’s White chroniclers, like Clara Eno and Edward Briscoe, tended to minimize or omit entirely the roles played by Black and indigenous dwellers of the valley. Federal law imposes its own limits - the Forest Service keeps an internal map of sites of archaeological and historical interest in the valley, but the National Acts of Historical and Archaeological Preservation exempt this map from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act, an exemption that I am personally in agreement with - though,  at this time, my appeal to the Forest Service for an overriding exception has not been processed.


"So, what I present to y’all today are some of the sounds and sights of collective memories in decay. When witnessed all-together, they tell a tale in ruins of the different relationships human beings have had with this particular place: arrowheads, old rock walls, and too many beer cans to count tell a centuries-long-story of use for hunting, agricultural cultivation, and recreation. Every single one of the objects you are about to see has a story – together they constitute a rich, interwoven tapestry of human works and ecological processes, international in scope and intimately local in manifestation, literally just lying around in plain view of those who care to tarry a moment and ask, “Now just how did that get there?”


"Well, let’s take a look!"


Thank you for watching!