The Haunted West Memory and Commemoration at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West

An engrossing exploration of conflicting and complex narratives about the American West and its Native American heritage, violent colonial settlement, and natural history

Drawing upon the mythic figure of William F. Cody, or “Buffalo Bill,” the Buffalo Bill Center of the West (BBCW) is complex of five museums in Cody, Wyoming, that celebrate the “spirit of the West.” The authors of The Haunted West use the BBCW as a prism through which readers can view the center’s complex ethos: Anglo-American guilt along with a reverence for Native American culture, a sacred and sublime vision of the region embodied in Western art, a vexed celebration of the West’s endangered natural resources, and the ever-presence of violence in the weaponry on display.

The BBCW includes the Buffalo Bill Museum, the Plains Indian Museum, the Whitney Western Art Museum, the Draper Museum of Natural History, and the Cody Firearms Museum. The Haunted West explores the way that the multiple histories of the American West in these installations disrupt and erupt into the present, like apparitions whose forgotten and suppressed stories return to contest and unsettle familiar contemporary narratives.

Through the powerful interplay of presence and absence in its displays, the ethos of the center functions as a haunt for American identity even as it is haunted by horrors of the nation’s colonial past. A product of two decades of work, The Haunted West offers a rich interpretive approach to memory spaces everywhere, and museums in particular.

Greg Dickinson is chair of the Department of Communication Studies at Colorado State University. He is author of Suburban Dreams: Imagining and Building the Good Life.

Eric Aoki is professor of communication studies at Colorado State University. His scholarship has appeared in several journals.

Brian L. Ott is distinguished professor of communication and media at Missouri State University. He is coauthor of Critical Media Studies: An Introduction.