What is she saying about how our relationship to the past strongly impacts our current times and even the way that people think about future conditions in our country?

Step 1. Listen to PODCAST #1. Share 4 takeaways that help to map out the ideas that Nikole Hannah-Jones engages in her work on the 1619 Project and her ongoing work as a journalist and public intellectual/educator. For your takeaways, among other things, try to address the concepts of “historical amnesia” and of “America’s exceptionalism.” What is she saying about how our relationship to the past strongly impacts our current times and even the way that people think about future conditions in our country? Watch video #2a and read short reading #2b for an introduction to this conception and a sense of how it can significantly re-frame the way we think about our country. Share 3 takeaways from #2a and 3 takeaways from #2b. Step 2. Read short reading #3 for further background that helps explain the way ideas about land use, and freedom, shaped the encounters between indigenous peoples and the Europeans who kept coming to North America in great numbers. READ from bottom of p. 7 to the bottom of p. 12. In what ways do these pages add to your understanding of the perceptions + misperceptions between native peoples and Europeans? Do the different cultural outlooks and conceptual toolkits help to excuse the way the colonists viewed and treated the natives (Indians)? Share 3 or 4 takeaways as you grapple with those questions. Listen to TED Talk #4 and say 3 ways that this adds to or sharpens your understanding of the Unit materials so far. Choose either #5A OR #5B and try to connect the TED Talk to our themes. Finally, read/skim #6 and share 2 takeaways, but also write a sentence or two about whether you feel persuaded that the concept of “settler colonialism” is an important lens through which to view America’s history down through today……Why, or why not? Keep in mind, while you work through this Unit, that the idea of “settler colonialism” is not keyed to an event, or a series of events, that have happened. Instead, it suggests that there are underlying structures that have shaped our material existence as well as our consciousness of ourselves (shaping our self-awareness and sense of identity, as well as our imaginations). The stakes of this, conceptually, are significant. For instance, if the power structures, dominance, and erasures from our colonial past are still ongoing in our current day, then we have not grown beyond them, and thus we continue to be a country deep in the grip of (white) “settler colonialism.” #1: https://www.npr.org/2021/12/22/1067027360/nikole-hannah-jones-on-the-power-of-collective-memory #2a: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Y4WQ9KvRPk #2b: settler colonialism (attached) #3: foner (attached) #4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wRbfOmHgts #5a: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3FL9uhTH_s #5b: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yru1AFZfU1M #6: Not a Nation (attached)