Microlecture pt1

 One of the things I found interesting was the idea that the print history of There There is so short. While this is obvious, it is interesting to think about where the future of the print history will go. Maybe one day, the print will be obsolete and you can only access it from a digital source. However, this short print history is paralleled with a long history of Indigenous American storytelling. Typically oral, there are codexes that explain stories, however they are not easy to understand to the untrained eye. Another thing I found interesting/sad was the lack of distinction between tribes in history lessons. In my educational experience, we did learn about how Native Americans in the past had rich culture and history, but not how each one is different from the other. We kind of learned about a collective whole. Another interesting idea is how indigenous stories in an American sense can be wrong. For example, the Pocahontas story. I never knew that story was so wrong. We really need to listen to original stories in order to understand the Native American story. That means listening to the Tommy Orange story, There There. However this story is about modern day. Stories about the past are less accessible. I think there needs to be a movement to make ancient stories about history more available to the modern public. This will allow children to learn about the past in a way that helps them understand the current Native understanding of the world. 


Comments

  1. Avery PiersonNovember 21, 2021 at 8:06 PM

    I had the same experience; in school when I learned about Native American history, we learned about indigenous people as one, homogenous group, not as many different tribes with different traditions, languages, ect.

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  2. AnonymousNovember 23, 2021 at 8:41 PM

    I was very fortunate to actually have a Native American teacher at my school who was able to teach about the different tribes and the histories behind them. It is difficult to find someone who can teach about the tribes as America tends to prefer to ignore what is happening the tribes.

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  3. Isabella FernandezNovember 27, 2021 at 10:39 AM

    I also had the same experience when studying Native American history in school. My school really focused on the Cheyenne tribe and allowed us to make the assumption that all tribes were quite similar, which is so far from the truth. I do agree with your statement that a movement must occur to allow the public to gain access to the true history of our nation.

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