Eric Kennedy Reflections on Berry (A Continuous Harmony) #2

Eric Kennedy Reflections on Berry (A Continuous Harmony) #2

In reading the Chapter entitled The Regional Motive I found it amazing how easily and tastefully Berry completely obliterates John W Corrington and Miller Williams’ work. He raised two very good points in my mind a question that I felt obligated to lend my thought to. One, where history is concerned, who should be exalted?

To the first question I draw on Berry’s thoughts that “..the history of the white man’s life on this continent has been to an alarming extent the history of the waste and exhaustion and degradation of the land.”(p.63) This is an astounding claim, which you can open any textbook and read that these claims are true. But can you really? The answer is no, well you can read that we bought land from the natives, and so nicely liberated them from their savage ways. And our hero’s are all those who blazed a trail through this great nation we call home. Are these the people who should be exalted? Or should the Hero’s of the native’s be praised for their accomplishments. Natives were the ones who inherited this land, we stole it. In my opinion we should not stain the natives with this ideal that we gave them better alternatives to their ways of life because for them they were better off with those ways. Their customs and traditions were what held them together and kept them going. Now that there are reservations many traditions were lost and all of their land was taken away. I feel that the native peoples should be stressed in schools and they should be exalted rather than the trail blazers and explorers that we look up to and revere.