I think it is a good thing that the United States and Alaska are suddenly in the mood to clean up our public history. I have two personal gripes: the name “Shelikof” on the Alaska map, and the image of Andrew Jackson on our $20 bill. Both should be removed. Grigori Shelikof and other Russians did a great evil to the Unangans; Baranof was a beneficiary of that evil. Jackson committed the double sin of Native American removal and advocating slavery. If historians can locate other inappropriate Russian names on the map for removal, let’s eliminate them also.
I have been frustrated for many years with our willingness to memorialize villains. I know that sometimes, it is purposeful; both Josef Stalin and the Daughters of the Confederacy knew that to control the story of the past allows one to control the present. But we need to be careful that when we now recast the past that we avoid falling into the error of self-righteousness (I think that is now called “presentism”); we must strive to be dispassionate and to maintain strict accuracy. Let’s keep our perspective: for example, the navigator and cartographer Captain James Cook certainly should not be grouped with the vicious company mentioned above.
I am not quite sure who owns or controls the Statehood Monument on Second Avenue, named the Eisenhower Memorial/Anchorage Rotary on a municipal map. Should we memorialize on it a criminal who corrupted a large portion of our state Legislature? Surely we are justified in requesting the removal of the name of Bill Allen from that monument.
Clarence Crawford
Anchorage
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