NCPH Working Group: Decolonial Approaches to America 250
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Decolonial Approaches to America 250
Facilitator: Rebecca Amato, Illinois Humanities
2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the signing of the United States’ Declaration of Independence, a document that announced to the world that thirteen British colonies in North America had formed into a unified, sovereign nation. Preparations are underway to commemorate and celebrate “America 250,” and public history and humanities organizations are already developing guidelines for approaching the event. This working group plans to develop alternative guidelines that center a discourse of postcoloniality and imagine new solidarities for the nation’s future.
In a moment of polarizing politics, TikTok attention spans, and binary analyses of US history, there may be a tendency to deliver easy narratives on the meaning and legacies of the Declaration. As public historians, we are called upon to counter these tendencies, while recognizing the deep longing for hope and reassurance that this anniversary can evoke.
Postcolonial framing allows us to highlight historical and regional specificity; different concepts and uneven experiences of independence, freedom, and liberation; and new visions of nationhood that are inclusive, imaginative, reparative, and grounded in honesty. Among the questions we ask are:
How do we commemorate the Declaration if we are organizing programming in a state or territory that was one of the original British colonies? How do we do so if our state or territory was not colonized or part of a different colonial project in 1776?
How do we approach the Declaration if we are descended from peoples who were excluded from the promise of democracy (i.e. Native people, enslaved Africans, etc.)?
How might we envision a Declaration of Independence for the next 250 years that includes 20th/21st c. thinking about postcoloniality, the work of decolonization, activism and scholarship around liberation, and futurisms (Afrofuturism, Indigenous Futurism, Latinx futurism, etc.) This working group may be relevant to staff of state humanities councils, national or regional history councils, museum or historical society programmers and educators, and scholars. The most likely outcomes of our collaboration will be a best practices guide, searchable database, and/or a series of articles for the History@Work blog. However, we will determine these goals collectively once the group is formed.