I think that each reading and slide we saw this week we extremely packed with factual shock and truth. I think that every reading helped me understand these prominent figures way more. I feel like while I was reading about the truth and the actual history that happened to these figures it affected me with a huge pull back to reality and that history is messing and nothing ends in happy ending. I was taught about these prominent figures like Pocahontas and the event of the First Thanksgiving and remembered what I was taught in elementary school, kids’ movies, and heard about their stories and what happened, however never realized that what happened after wasn’t a happy ending. Every Thanksgiving when I was young we were taught the Pilgrims and Natives came together as a moment of unity and respect and having a heartwarming feel to it, however, I remember knowing little about what exactly happened to those natives other than knowing that the colonists ending up wronging them. It only made sense to deconstruct the myth and realize that I can’t be that naive, so it only made sense to learn that the colonists never saw the Wampanoag people as equals and that all Wampanoag would be forced out and replaced with more colonists.
I remember knowing Pocahontas as a love story between a native woman and an Englishman and thinking it was about love and they were breaking boundaries, but I realized that this was produced by Disney. I never knew that she had to become a sort of example for the “Power” of Christianity and colonization. It was disturbing to try and imagine what that would have been like for a young native girl to be forced to leave home and marry a man of different beliefs and a different way of life and now she’s got to change her identity and her beliefs. To end that she had to have his children and become a model and example of what these “savages” could be turned into and finally, she passed due to sickness just a few years later after heading home from Europe. I think it was important for me to realize that just because a story could be popular and loved from one of the story, it isn’t always seen the same from the other side. I realized that it’s important to be told the truth of what happened no matter who it could make angry or if it challenges the popular view. It also even more solidifies my opinion that humans are the most cruel animal on earth.