"Mesa Verde Belongs to You": A Spatial Analysis of Mesa Verde National Park

At over 50,000 acres of federally protected land, Mesa Verde National Park (MVNP) can aid in our understanding of colonialism, wilderness, and archaeology. Using Delle's theoretical framework of space as material culture, this paper will analyze the material, cognitive, and social space of MVNP to investigate the ways in which it was used as a tool of settler colonialism. I argue that MVNP reifies settler-indigenous relationships through the creation and maintenance of wilderness, preservation of archaeological sites, and interpretation of ancestral Puebloan material culture, and explore paths to decolonization.