David W. Norman’s article “Forgetting Michael Heizer’s Effigy Tumuli: The Disappearance of a Settler Earthwork” will trace the history of Effigy Tumuli (1983–85), from its origins in cultural appropriation to its current state of disrepair, arguing that the project demonstrates the naturalization of dispossession and other hallmarks of settler colonial place relations in the Midwestern landscape.
David W. Norman is Henry John Drewal Postdoctoral Fellow in Art History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His writing has been published in the journals Kunst og Kultur, October, and Peripeti as well exhibition catalogs. His research examines the epistemic impact of settler colonialism on experimental arts practices in the Americas, particularly in Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland) and the US Great Lakes region, centering the work of Indigenous artists who have challenged colonial representation through conceptual and formal methods that echo activists’ efforts to disrupt unjust political representation.