The monument to Hannah Duston has stood in GAR Park in Haverhill, Massachusetts since 1879. Recently, the City Council of Haverhill was asked to take down the statue due to its perpetuation of racial stereotypes against Native Americans as well as supporting a symbol of structural racism that has been at the root of America since it’s founding. However, the City Council decided that they were “not sure” they should pursue the issue of the statue at this time, and that it is a “symbol of perseverance and survival.” This statue is harmful to the community of Haverhill as it has taught its residents that Hannah Duston should be celebrated for “patriotic heroism” in her extreme and gruesome violence against the Abenaki tribe that had taken her captive on what had been colonized land. Duston was taken captive as a result of rising tensions between English colonists, French Canadians, and various Native American tribes. King Philip’s War (1675-1676) decimated between 60-80% of New England Indian nations, leading to the Abenaki and other tribes to conduct a raid on towns such as Haverhill. Although Hannah Duston was subjected to these raids, and may have had her baby killed, she also skinned the heads of 10 Abenaki people, including 6 children. In the present, Hannah Duston’s actions belong in history books for the youth to learn the real story, not in the streets of Haverhill right next to City Hall. The statue only supports the narrative of justifying American imperialism in the 18th and 19th century, as well as the attribution of the stereotype of Native Americans being “savages,” as ingrained into the statue. The idea of a feminized, always innocent America has become the principal by which the United States has justified its interactions with their enemies, so there is no reason for a statue of a woman wielding a weapon, named the “mother of the American tradition of scalp hunting,” to be in our town today. The city council of Haverhill must act accordingly and complete their research on Hannah Duston before they declare the statue to be a “symbol of perseverance,” when it is quite the opposite. We call on the city council to remove this statue so that the city of Haverhill may progress onwards from the false myth of patriotism behind the Hannah Duston story.