Maybe some effort could be better spent on economic inequality that keeps kids from getting educated at all. This is a waste of time and energy and is really another attempt at rewriting history. This is so typical of base level politics....get people to hate each other for something that happened hundreds of years ago and was caused by people you never knew, or would want to know. Kind of like the Middle East isn't it?
3 comments:
Some history does need to be rewritten, there is no doubt about it. I do not disagree with you about the base level politics thing and the fact that both the Spaniard and the "Mountain Man" are part of history is a fact. The mountain man was a flash in the pan in New Mexico history. No doubt that they caused some change, but no where near as much as the Native Americans. I am not sure that the noise about the issue is really worth the effort, but then again I really do not identify as a Native American. I may actually feel differently if that were different.
The "mountain man" on the seal looks like the things the wardrobe department came up with in Hollywood movies like The Alamo and TV programs like Davey Crockett, not what the easterners who came out here and started stealing land looked like.
I like New Mexicans take on it. I really don't have a story. I don't believe hardly any of what was taught me and no one in my family told me one. I 'm thinking of going with something like, great great grandfather Eisenminger got on a boat in Frankfort thinking it was headed for Dusseldorf.
History is a story we tell ourselves, even that ongoing argument we call academic history. None of it remotely encompasses the truth. It's just us trying to explain how we ended up in a reality that's nothing like the future we imagined, which is still there, too, alternately mocking and beseeching us. My great grandaddy waking up in America explains how I ended up in New Mexico as well as anything.
An economic analysis of history comes closer than anything else, really. It gets closer to what actually motivated people to do what they did.
The alternate UNM seal can be seen on Facebook. You might have to click on it to see it properly as someone has added graphics over it:
https://www.facebook.com/therednation
I agree with @New Mexican as well. I think history reflects who wrote it and who was in power. The seal's creator thought conquistadors and mountain men "made" New Mexico -- and no one really thinks that today. Updating the seal to reflect today's understanding of history is appropriate. Accusing UNM of being racist is perhaps not the right tactic. I for one had no idea what the seal looked like and I look forward to seeing something different emerge from this controversy.
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