Last week, the social media accounts of the Department of Homeland Security posted an image of "American Progress," a 19th-century painting that depicts a floating white woman herding buffalo and Native people off Western lands. Its caption read: "A Heritage to be proud of, a Homeland worth Defending." The original of the painting, which is by John Gast and was completed in 1872, is on display at the Autry Museum of the American West. @19thnews spoke with some of the experts at the museum about its historical significance, how they place it in context, and their perspective on DHS's use of the picture. Virginia Scharff, the museum's chair of Western history, sees the strategic deployment of the “American Progress” painting as deeply insidious. “The Department of Homeland Security is not sending scantily clad White women,” she said, “but instead sending guys with guns and truncheons and masks to grab people off the streets. There’s a deliberate kind of deception being practiced here that is really cynical and really dangerous, in my view."
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