Assignment Papers-Why do we not celebrate Native Americans as one of the great “founders” of this country as we do Columbus, or the Pilgrims, or Washington, Jefferson, etc? Are they not part of our foundations? How would James Loewen explain this?

Assignment Papers-Why do we not celebrate Native Americans as one of the great “founders” of this country as we do Columbus, or the Pilgrims, or Washington, Jefferson, etc? Are they not part of our foundations? How would James Loewen explain this?

Did any of you know all of this? Most of my students are dumbfounded by these revelations.

And if I were to ask you to name something foundational to this country that we have adopted from Native America, how many of you could give me an answer?

I ask you all of these things as we continue our discussions of the “discoverer” of America, Christopher Columbus, for a reason. Was he truly the discoverer of this land? Were there other foreigners who came here long before Columbus? Why don’t we celebrate the Afro-Phoenicians (Africans) as “discoverers” of America? or the Chinese? for that matter, why do we celebrate a ” discoverer” at all when there were already 120million people living here?

Why do we not celebrate Native Americans as one of the great “founders” of this country as we do Columbus, or the Pilgrims, or Washington, Jefferson, etc? Are they not part of our foundations? How would James Loewen explain this?

Especially since much of our ideas about democracy actually come from Native Americans?