By Debra Adams Simmons, HISTORY Executive Editor, Monday, October 12, 2020
Whose history is it anyway?
Today, 16 states, the District of Columbia, and at least 130 cities are celebrating Indigenous Peoples' Day. More than 30-plus statues honoring Christopher Columbus have been removed since the beginning of sweeping racial reckoning now underway.
Across the United States, statues are being toppled, places named for colonizers, slave owners and white supremacists are being renamed, and the framing in which U.S. history has been taught is being upended. Just last week the Mellon Foundation announced a $250 million investment to revisit who gets honored, pay for new statues that challenge the historical record—and the removal of old ones. (Pictured above, Osage Nation member Olivia Ramirez, 22, in Tulsa.)
Beyond monuments, 88 percent of respondents in a Nat Geo poll last year said understanding history is key to understanding current events. Yet, according to a 2015 study by Pennsylvania State University researchers, only 13 percent of U.S. public school curriculum standards included information about Natives in a post-1900 context, Nat Geo’s Rachel Brown writes.
Our history, warts and all, is getting clearer all the time. Just this summer, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that much of eastern Oklahoma is an Indian reservation. The government had promised the territory as a permanent home for Native American tribes but settlers stole the land that led to the state of Oklahoma. An effort in 1905 to have a Native American-majority state called Sequoyah in present-day eastern Oklahoma was thwarted in Washington, D.C. despite widespread popular support. (Pictured above at left, artist Bobby D. Wilson, a Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota member; at right, Osage elder Herman Mongrain Lookout.)The idea of Columbus Day has been in direct conflict with the Native truth we understand. Its celebration played down what writer Mark Trahant called the wars and diseases such as smallpox that destroyed the world of American Indians. A study, called “Reclaiming Native Truth,” cited “the biased and revisionist history taught in school” for the lack of knowledge and erasure of Native Americans. It also noted “the effect of limited—or zero—experience with Native peoples.” Underway: A new effort to transform teaching about Native Americans.
It’s about time.
Do you get this newsletter daily? If not, sign up here or forward to a friend.
(Sources: National Graphic)
Đăng nhận xét