This week I learned the actual truth about Pocahontas and surprisingly I was shocked by it. In high school I was never taught the actual truth about her and I kind of only knew her because of the Disney movie. The truth was very saddening to me, I saw her in the English portraits, and I didn’t even know it was her. From the arts and culture website, they state how “her features, particularly her face. The painter has lightened Pocahontas’ skin, softened her cheekbones and other features and utilizes color to downplay her Native heritage.” From the images she appears very whitewashed and showed no trace of her actual heritage. She looked like Michael Jackson with the all-white skin. I did not realize how the English really tried to eliminate her looks and use her as an example on how they could turn Natives into white people. Also, another similar theme in this was Christianity. When she was taken back to England, she was also converted to a Christian.
From school and from my family I learned that Thanksgiving is a time for you and your loved ones to come together and have a feast. In elementary school I was taught that the Native Americans and Pilgrims came together and had a feast. My family celebrates Thanksgiving every year and we have a turkey with the family. I was never taught about the truth of what actually happened to the Wampanoag Indians. The Pilgrims never saw them as equals, and they saw they as a resource to exploit. Eventually they would be forced off of their lands because of the arrival of more colonists to take over those lands.
It is important to grapple with the complexity of history because it is written by the people who take over and have power. Everything we learned is from our ancestors’ views that took over these lands that once belonged to the natives. They have softened the details of what actually took place in these events, and they do not mention on how horrible some of their actions were. We see history from one side but not the other, and now that I have learned what has happened on the other side, I have a better understanding of what truly happened. We need to explore and here both sides of the story before we can make our judgements on the choices that our founders made.
Hi Lucas!
For me, it was equally interesting grappling with the historical realities and lived experiences of Indigenous people during the period that we know as “early America.” There has been so much romanticism around Native peoples in art, literature, and films to the extent that it produces and perpetuates harmful myths. Your point about the complexity of history is so important, because we need to be mindful of who these documents were produced by and who they were produced for. Understanding their colonial context is critical!