Our Country/Whose Country?: Early Westerns and Travel Films as Stories of Settler Colonialism

The concept of settler colonialism offers an invaluable lens to reframe early westerns and travel pictures as re-enactments of the United States' repressed past. Westerns in particular propose a remarkable vision of white settlers' westward expansion that reveals a transformation in what "American Progress" came to mean.

Initially, these films tracked settlers moving westward across the Appalachians, Great Plains, and Rockies. Their seizure of "empty land" provoked continual resistance from ...