Daniel K. Richter’s story, Facing East from Indian Country, gives a glimpse of the historical background information Europeans gave about the Indian country discovering a new world. The story states that the historical present day information about the Indian country first becoming aware of a new world across the ocean is an imaginative creation. An imaginative creation described by Europeans who misunderstood much of what happened and silent the archeological artifacts. The story then includes three scenarios. The first story covers Native hunters who find their traps missing and find the body of a bleeding man hanging. The hunters find two things on the ground a fishhook, and a sharp edge object. Both objects are made of a black substance
Cronon raises the question of the belief or disbelief of the Indian’s rights to the land. The Europeans believed the way Indians used the land was unacceptable seeing as how the Indians wasted the natural resources the land had. However, Indians didn’t waste the natural resources and wealth of the land but instead used it differently, which the Europeans failed to see. The political and economical life of the Indians needed to be known to grasp the use of the land, “Personal good could be replaced, and their accumulation made little sense for ecological reasons of mobility,” (Cronon, 62).
In Daniel Richter’s essay War and Culture, he uses a mix of primary sources and his own comprehension of history, to formulate a general understanding of the native experience. In our experience watching The Black Robe we were able to analyze history through a chain of sources. There are many similarities to analyze from these sources. Harmony and balance is the root of many aspects in Native culture including: dependency on Europeans, warfare style, rituals and customs, mourning, population maintenance, and ultimately adoption-torture.
The essay starts with the “Columbian Encounter between the cultures of two old worlds “ (98). These two old worlds were America and Europe. This discovery states that Native Americans contributed to the development and evolution of America’s history and culture. It gives the fact that indians only acted against europeans to defend their food, territory, and themselves.
In the article written by Heather Pringle, “The First Americans,” she combines findings of various archaeologists across the globe that have aimed to debunk a popular theory of migration to the Americas. As stated in the article, it is commonly believed that the first to arrive in the New World traveled across the Bering Straight, a passageway far north connecting the northeastern tip of Asia and Alaska. 13,000 years ago, these hunters were said to have followed the mammals and other large prey over the ice-free passageway. Evidence of their stone tools being left behind has led them to be called the Clovis people. This article uncovers new evidence presented by archaeologists that people migrated to the Americas in a different way, and much earlier.
Europeans saw the world from a vantage point that was wholly different than that of the Native
The point of Ritcher's work is not only to tell old stories from a Native point of view but finding out Indians as they were with European colonization happening in their land. How he words the differences of " old documents being read in different to reorient our perspective on the continent's past" (p. 9) outlines the period of Western colonization in America rather than Western colonization of America. Imagination is required for the reconstruction of our new point of view from the Natives. Richter follows...
In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. However, even after centuries later, little is truly known of the mysterious voyage and findings of the new world.1 By examining “Letter from Columbus to Luis Santangel”, one can further contextualize the events of Columbus' exploration of the New World. The letter uncovers Columbus' subtle hints of his true intentions and exposes his exaggerated tone that catered to his lavish demands with Spain. Likewise, The Columbian Voyage Map read in accordance with the letter helps the reader track Columbus' first, second, third, and fourth voyage to the New World carefully and conveniently. Thus, the letter and map's rarity and description render invaluable insight into Columbus' intentionality of the New World and its indigenous inhabitants.
During the 16th and 17th centuries, when the Europeans started to come over to the new world, they discovered a society of Indians that was strikingly different to their own. To understand how different, one must first compare and contrast some of the very important differences between them, such as how the Europeans considered the Indians to be extremely primitive and basic, while, considering themselves civilized. The Europeans considered that they were model societies, and they thought that the Indians society and culture should be changed to be very similar to their own.
As children, students are taught from textbooks that portray Native Americans and other indigenous groups as small, uncivilized, mostly nomadic groups with ways of life that never changed or disfigured the land. Charles Mann’s account of Indian settlements’ histories and archaeological findings tell us otherwise. Mann often states in his book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus that the indigenous groups of North and South America were far more advanced and populous than students are taught. He focuses on many different cultural groups and their innovations and histories that ultimately led to either their demise or modern day inhabitants.
Annu Palakunnathu Matthew (1964- ) is an Indian artist who was born in London but raised in India. It’s acknowledged that it gets complex when individuals begin to ask where she’s from. The reason of this result is because people seem to be confused when Matthew says she’s from Rhode Island. Every time she states she’s Indian, people consider she’s Native American but she has to quickly clarify that she’s an Indian from India. With this confusion that Matthew has experienced in her lifetime about educating where she’s from, Matthew has creatively produced a series of artwork that encounters the idea of being Indian. The series of artwork that will be talked about is An Indian from India (2001 – 2003). With these artistic photographs Matthew
In Thomas King’s “’You’ll Never Believe What Happened’ Is a Great Way to Start,” a battle of stories can be seen in how different cultures tell the story of creation. These stories and the manner in which they are told are at the core of different possible belief systems, one Christian and the other more “traditional”. Each story suggests a different framework for viewing the world in its entirety. In some ways they may be interpreted as the root of such framework; in other ways these stories can be seen as small embodiments of a larger meta-narrative. It is within the larger narrative of colonialism that I will attempt to dissect several examples of this battle of stories.
Holt, Sol. Exploring World History. New Jersey: Globe Book Company Inc, 1990. Pg. 204-205, 311.
This reflects how European attitudes towards the interpretation of artefacts have changed from being centred around British interpretation of colonial significance, to now understanding that our own inference is not enough and that the Bini narrative needs to be heard. This helps to bring back the Bini voice and allows them to be able to verify their own oral narratives, which is important as without the proper interpretation, the cultural significance of the artefacts becomes lost. (Illustration Book,
Throughout ‘To the Welsh Critic Who Doesn’t Find Me Identifiably Indian’, Arundhati Subramaniam argues that the “the business of language”, or the language that one speaks, should not dictate one’s identity. This becomes crucial in her poem as she uses this argument in response to a Welsh Critic, who does not identify her as being Indian. The poem substantiates her perspective of language through various techniques. For instance: Subramaniam reinforces the critic’s cultural assumptions in a defiant tone; she questions him, repeatedly, about language and eventually she challenges him, insisting he should explain to her how he would receive her as “Identifiably Indian”.
“The only people for whom we can even begin to imagine properly human, individual, existences are the literate and the consequential, the wazirs and the sultans, the chroniclers, and the priests—the people who had the power to inscribe themselves physically upon time” (Ghosh 17). History is written by the victorious, influential and powerful; however, history has forgotten the people whose voices were seized, those who were illiterate and ineloquent, and most importantly those who were oppressed by the institution of casted societies. Because history does not document those voices, it is the duty to the anthropologist, the historiographer, the philosopher as well as scholars in other fields of studies to dig for those lost people in the forgotten realm of time. In In An Antique Land, the footnotes of letters reveal critical information for the main character, which thematically expresses that under the surface of history is something more than the world can fathom.