sometimes i feel like this whole city has no idea of it's history

Jan 21, 2008 15:21

in 1795, fort edmonton was founded by the hudson's bay trading company ( Read more... )

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dot says: annu January 22 2008, 08:34:34 UTC
i've only just started hearing about the real history of this place. I'm reading Iroquois women: The Gantowisas, by Barbara Mann. Its the FIRST history book i've read that tells me the REAL past of this place. i love it so much.Your post gave me goosebumps, i think your right to think it strange that they say this place is only 200 years old...you'll get the real story i'm sure and when you do...o...please tell me what they say!

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Re: dot says: myhelena January 22 2008, 16:20:08 UTC
i find it especialy odd that everyone seems fammiliar with the geological times, the billions of years ago times. the age of the dinosaurs, the great swamps and fern forests that turned into oil, everyone is aware of. the time of edmonton's founding? strangely unfammiliar.
the other expressways are named for wayne gretzky and other even more modern people. it surprised me to find out that anthony henday was as distant in the past as he was. since writing, i've been wondering if he did walk into this place or if he came up (or down!) the river from somewhere else.
i don't consider modern history any less "real". i'm as curious about AH as i am about who he met when he got here.

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Re: dot says: annu January 22 2008, 20:44:07 UTC
its not that modern history is less real to me - its just that i now know that the way that the white man (and sometimes white woman) recorded the history here is so patently false. So many LIES that they passed as true. Not "modern" history that i'm skeptical of - colonialist history i have always known to be weird. I read this piece by an indian person called Dua who talked about learning about the "other indians" when they were young and knowing that what they were learning was funny and false...didn't make sense...its that feeling that is slipping away turning into a more concrete sense of being lied to. For example, so many times in my life i had learned that there have never been and matriarchies, they told me this to quash my womynist leanings into mere idealism....and now i read of the Gantowisas....

they must have been really scared of what we could do to tell us such lies ;)

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