CANCELED | The Global Interior: Prospecting and Protesting Mineral Frontiers

CANCELED | When one thinks of the history of U.S. global expansion, the Department of the Interior rarely comes to mind. Its very name declares its narrow portfolio. However, the government organ best known for managing domestic natural resources and operating public parks has constantly supported and projected American power. After overseeing settler colonialism in the American West, the department cultivated and exploited its image as an innocuous scientific-research and environmental-management organization while driving America’s insatiable demand for raw materials in new zones: overseas territories, foreign nations, the oceans, and outer space. In a period marked by global commitments to self-determination, Interior helped the United States maintain key benefits of empire without the burden of playing the imperialist villain.