Tag: Native American

David Grann’s The Wager: a drama of murder, insurrection, escape and an empire at sea

David Grann’s The Wager: a drama of murder, insurrection, escape and an empire at sea

by | Sep 16, 2024 | , , | 0

Reading time: 7 minutes
In 1740, a modest squadron of ships from Britain’s Royal Navy departed Portsmouth in pursuit of an immoderate treasure. Commodore George Anson, who led the flotilla, was tasked with sailing south and west across the Atlantic Ocean, rounding Cape Horn, and interfering in imperial Spain’s lucrative trans-Pacific trade. But even before the mission got underway, its prospects of success appeared dubious. A sizeable proportion of the roughly 2,000 sailors and non-seamen under Anson’s command lacked suitable experience. Worse still was the fact that so many of them took up their posts already in a parlous state of health. It is little surprise, therefore, that Anson’s “famous” voyage around the world proved to be, for most of the men who undertook it, a journey of no return.

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500 years after Ferdinand Magellan landed in Patagonia, there’s nothing to celebrate for its indigenous peoples

500 years after Ferdinand Magellan landed in Patagonia, there’s nothing to celebrate for its indigenous peoples

by | Feb 19, 2024 | , | 0

Reading time: 5 minutes
Five hundred years ago, on March 31 1520, the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan began a sojourn in a part of South America that has been known as Patagonia ever since. Magellan’s five-month long overwinter in a natural harbour that has become known as Puerto San Julián was part of the first circumnavigation of the globe.

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WHY IS CHARLES CURTIS’S LEGACY SO COMPLICATED?

WHY IS CHARLES CURTIS’S LEGACY SO COMPLICATED?

by | May 1, 2023 | , | 0

Reading time: 6 minutes
Since the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, journalists, scholars, and activists have celebrated Harris as the first vice president who is a woman and of Asian American and African American heritage. She is not, however, the first person of color to hold the office. For many people, this comes as a surprise. However, for scholars of Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS), as well as many US historians whose work focuses on the executive branch of the federal government, Charles Curtis’s name is already well-known. Curtis, a member of the Kaw Nation and the first person of color to serve as vice president, is suddenly a figure of popular interest. 

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Supreme Court upholds American Indian treaty promises, orders Oklahoma to follow federal law

Supreme Court upholds American Indian treaty promises, orders Oklahoma to follow federal law

by | Nov 19, 2021 | , | 0

Reading time: 5 minutes
Land in eastern Oklahoma that the United States promised to the Creek Nation in an 1833 treaty is still a reservation under tribal sovereignty, at least when it comes to criminal law, the Supreme Court ruled on July 9. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the majority, “Because Congress has not said otherwise, we hold the government to its word.”

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