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Showing posts from September, 2017

America's Treatment of Native Americans

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The United States of America is known as the nation of equality, the nation of freedom, the nation of utmost safety and protection. It began as a vast, empty land occupied by the indigenous people who built their lives thriving off of it – their crops, their homes, their clothes, their whole lives revolved around using the resources they had around them. However, when the first settlers came over to explore this seemingly unoccupied land, they ended up kicking the natives out and calling it their own. Native Americans endured years of torture, rape, racism, discrimination, arguably every form of evil imaginable, by the foreign invaders who took over their lands – even to this day. And yet we still call ourselves the nation of freedom if we ignore the rights and issues of those whose land we stole in the first place? Native Americans suffer the highest rates of alcoholism, depression, suicide, and more compared to any other minority group…plausibly as a result of our ac

Nonlinear Narratives vs. Linear Monuments

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History is represented around us in a multitude of ways. Through statues, cemeteries, cenotaphs, books, articles, and memoirs, we are able to understand and relive the events that occurred in times before us. Remembering the past and reflecting upon it is vital in moving forward. However, what truly shares history in the most accurate manner? In my opinion, linear monuments such as cenotaphs do a far more accurate job at this than, per say, a nonlinear narrative. The key word in this is “accurate.” Linear monuments are able to accurately portray events in history because they undergo long processes in order to ensure all facts are precise. A number of professionals are called in and the opinions of many, such as family and friends to the deceased as well as historians, are taken into consideration. Furthermore, most of these structures “are bounded by walls of names” that depict exactly who died and how many (Booth 37). The facts provided in the areas encompassing linear memorial