College of Arts + Sciences Memory, Tewa Pueblo, & Oppenheimer

“Give It Back to the Indians”: Commemoration and Place in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer
Dr. Dmitri Brown, Postdoctoral Fellow, Society of Fellows, Assistant Professor, Department of American Culture, University of Michigan

Thursday, February 1, 2024

The story of the Manhattan Project raises deep questions about the relationship between humanity and technology. It also provides a site to consider the entanglement between place and collective memory. This talk offers a reading of Christopher Nolan’s recent film Oppenheimer through the lens of Indigenous modernity. Critics have hailed the film as a visually stunning masterpiece that sheds light on the birth of the Atomic Age. Yet what the film leaves in darkness is also important. What does it mean that the Manhattan Project took place in Los Alamos, northern New Mexico? To rephrase that question on Indigenous terms, what does it mean that the Manhattan Project took place in the Tewa Pueblo world on an ancestral mesa known as Tsireh-e Ahkono, meadow of the little birds.   

Nolan’s Oppenheimer serves as a commemoration of the Manhattan Project and its scientific director, J. Robert Oppenheimer. In popular culture, the film has become and will continue to function as a common reference point. This talk traces how the film corresponds with or contradicts Tewa Pueblo memories and understandings of place. In a broader sense, this talk asks how we commemorate the past, what role film plays in collective memory, and how the relative cultural values we place on technology shape the stories we tell.