I’ve spent more time than was fun at various German museums and monuments remembering the Holocaust, the hideous state sponsored wholesale slaughter of Jews, Roma, and other “undesireables”. I’m always impressed with how direct and without bullshit the presentation is. “We did these things. These are the things we did.” Little explanation of why, certainly no attempt to justify or explain away. Not even a facile apology. Just a documentation of the evil that Germans did. It is enough.

I want a museum about the American Indian genocide. A couple of rooms documenting pre-Columbian life, to convey the Native American’s culture, their society, their technology. Purely to humanize them and set the context for what comes next. Then room after room documenting the systemic program of murder, and burning, and sabotage. A room dedicated to the science of disease, the amount of destruction wrought by smallpox whether accidental or deliberate. A room or two of war weapons. Letters from the Indian killers explaining their techniques and goals. A room about the Indians who fought back and the disproportionate response to that rebellion. A whole diorama about Andrew Jackson (themed to the twenty dollar bill). One stark room depicting the mathematical scale of the genocide, perhaps with abstract sculpture. A temporary exhibit on the Trail of Tears not as an anomaly, but as a systemization of the violence done more haphazardly before.

It’s not a museum about Native Americans really. It’s a museum about Europeans, the things we did to conquer this continent. And should never forget.