British Museum Recasts America’s Founding Through Indigenous Eyes

The British Museum is marking the United States’ 250th anniversary with a small exhibition, “Declaring independence: USA 250,” that foregrounds Indigenous perspectives on the American Revolution and the Declaration of Independence signed on August 2, 1776. Americas curator Rose Taylor said the display emphasizes that the war was fought on Indigenous lands and explores shifting alliances among revolutionaries, Great Britain, and Indigenous Nations through three diplomatic gifts from the museum’s collection. A centerpiece is a silver Washington Peace Medal engraved in 1777 by Paul Revere and given to the Wabanaki Confederacy as part of a wartime alliance; it was later confiscated by the British and presented to King George III. The exhibition also includes a pipe tomahawk given to Mohawk leader Joseph Brant by the Duke of Northumberland in the early 1800s, reflecting Brant’s efforts to advocate for Mohawk land rights after many Mohawk, aligned with the British, lost land ceded to the United States and fled to British-controlled Canada.

Read the full article at Artnet News