What VERSION are you reading?

By Lara Trace Hentz  (history buff)

 

Wounded Knee Media Coverage (New Film: Line in the Sand by Kevin McKiernan

EXAMPLE  http://listen.sdpb.org/post/dakota-midday-wounded-knee-line-sand#stream/0

Years ago I realized the “version” is what we need to examine as much as the writing itself.  It’s very very important to look at WHO wrote it and why.  Ellowyn in Pine Ridge, South Dakota shared her tribe’s version of history that differed greatly from American textbooks.  That version of my education began in early 1990s in her kitchen.

In Pine Ridge, it’s usually by 4th grade the student turns off and loses interest, Ellowyn told me.  (She was a teacher.)  The Lakota do not believe what is in the American textbook because their history is left out.  She thinks (as do many in her Oglala tribe) that it’s important history is taught at home. It’s oral.  It’s not written down.  (If you google Oglala Lakota history, it’s generally written by the non-Indian and not accepted by the Oglala.)

My anthropologist sister Dr. Raeschelle Deimel in Vienna Austria and I were also discussing education a few days ago.  (She teaches college-level history.) It’s obvious certain “subjects” (like history) are a matter of importance and priority for governments who control our education and what version we get.  Not only do they control what we learn but how much, when we learn it, and there is no legal enforcement to measure accuracy or honesty, obviously.

Do parents have a say in what children learn?  Yes, kinda.  (If you teach at home, choose the version and control the story yourself).  (Top Photo:  Rae sent me this book and said it’s very important all Americans read it.)  I plan to spend my summer reading Zinn ingesting every chapter. I am still a history student on my own.

We in America don’t even recognize the agenda and propaganda in our history textbooks, Rae said.

Sadly too many Americans have turned their backs on history, we decided.  Probably too boring.  If you went to college you might choose a certain period of history to study in depth.  (That would also depend on which professor you get and how good they are.)  Now we think it’s a general lack of interest and disgust, as in “what good is history?” to make my life or salary better… or maybe deep down we sixth-sense we’re learning bullshit (?) – perhaps.

It surprised me when I learned from a German journalist Monique in Munich in 2005 that Americans know more about the Nazis than the Germans do.  History again is used as a tool, or it’s not used at all.  Why would the Germans suppress their own history? She said they don’t have museums to teach any version of their own Nazi history.  REALLY!  (Of course she told me she and other Germans do learn about it on their own.  Many of their parents were sent to the Hitler’s Youth Camps and were indoctrinated with propaganda.) History/story used as mind control? She said yes.

What I learned in my Catholic grade school happened over two straight days watching Germany’s Holocaust films on concentration camps when I was in 4th grade.  I now realize how disturbing it was for me to see that as a kid.  The nuns warned us but didn’t give us an option to leave the classroom.  I choked back tears and nearly threw up. I had nightmares for months.

Much later as an adult I studied WWII and the Nazis on my own, watching documentaries especially.  (We called it my scary Nazi phase.) I needed to understand HOW people could be this way and why. It took me many years to see WHO was behind the genocide of American Indians, and Jews, and many other ethnic minority groups and WHAT they ultimately wanted: domination and land, mostly.  READ a historic SOLUTION BY GABOR MATE

Today of course I question everything I read.  My two granddaughters deserve better than what their history textbooks will teach them.  It’s my job and it’s going to have to come from me.  Oral history, at home, in my kitchen.

 

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” –George Santayana (16 December 1863 in Madrid, Spain – 26 September 1952 in Rome, Italy) was a philosopher, essayist, poet and novelist.

History is so peculiar, right?  You can look and look –and read and read — and find only glimmers of truth.  “Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.” It was someone who told me to look at it as His = Story (Chapter 19 Surprises in Zinn’s book is an eye-opener on Indian Country history. I humbly suggest you spend some time this summer with Zinn’s book or watch him on youtube, if you haven’t already.

 

Read this blog too! Dr. Stuart Bramhall is brilliant HERE

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THIS VIDEO simply blew my mind :  please take an hour and listen to Biology of Belief:

 

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Dealing with adoption propaganda is also a full-time job for some of us…

The war on human trafficking and adoption ebbs and flows…blogs come and go… and here’s a brilliant post from 2013:

From Transracial Eyes blog:

Elsewhere on the site we have explored the “cost” of adoptee activism [ link ], and we have heard some stories of closed-down blogs and the like.  Certain adoptee sites have erased past posts …  (My dear friend Von experienced this censorship with Blogger when her earlier site was taken down. FBI, really?)

Source: The Adoption Mafia.

and HERE

Taking advantage of poor vulnerable families is a crime.  Adoption Agencies are wolves in sheep clothing.

Adoption is really taking children from the poor and giving to the rich.  Adoption Trafficking is coercive language that in the end, the person of ‘power’  manipulates the vulnerable parent, typically the mother, out of her child.  The end goal is to fulfill the demand of wanting infertile adopters and financially benefiting the industry.  The adoption fees are disguised as the costs to ‘process’ the child for adoption and can cost as high as $60,000+ for each transaction.  It’s modern day, 21st century, legalized child trafficking.  Think of how much that $60,000 could help a community in Uganda, China, India keeping families together.  Instead it’s an undercurrent of corruption in foreign countries all happening from the demand of rich Westerners.  The middle man (adoption agencies) strips away the true identity of the child and the adopter buys the child, so he or she will become one of their ‘own’.  In the adopters minds they may think of it as saving an ‘orphan’ or a ‘solution for infertility issues’, but there is strategic modern day ‘verbiage’ agencies use, social workers, lawyers or counselors (or anyone working for the adoption industry) to manipulate young mothers out of their children and that took decades to perfect.

Trafficking in Africa (2016)

2016: Fake passport used to take adopted child Home

For more news on industry practices, go to Adoptionland.org

To get a copy of Adoptionland: From Orphans to Activists visit here. (I am in this book)

***** I know my views on adoption are controversial. Hey, read me anyway. You might learn something… true?

p.s. If any reader wishes to read Stolen Generations in exchange for an honest review on Amazon, I will email you the pdf or epub. Email me: laratrace@outlook.com.  No strings attached.