Who deserves to be remembered?

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On Thursday night while researching memorials, my first idea was to search for memorial sites for Native American people who have been killed due to America's grand history of genocide. Maybe it was naive of me to believe that surely someone would've created at least ONE memorial for the lives we stole from, but to my disbelief there was not a single one. Upon further research, I learned that there was a memorial being planned, but it only specifically honors "American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian veterans and symbolize the country’s respect for Native Americans’ service and patriotism."

This made me a little mad.

Do the indigenous people of America only become something to be recognized if they do something to serve this country? What about the people who fought to preserve the land that was theirs before? 

Who deserves to be remembered?

The answer to this question may vary by person, background, environment, or country. You may disagree with the equal representation theme from class, "... not only are the graves of privates and captains, men killed eating soup, and men killed cutting wire, marked with identical headstones..." (Booth), or maybe you agree that death is death; the one thing we all have in common. 

I suggest you ask yourself to weigh the importance of people's impact on human life. We may remember people we loved in smaller ways, like a family member; and we may remember people on a larger more national scale, like Martin Luther King Jr. Day and his granting to us with a day off from school. But even if there isn't a national holiday for your grandma, isn't it still worth something to carry her memory all the same? 

If someone's life had an impact on you enough to make you think about them time to time, don't let let that be taken away from you. 

Comments

  1. Allison WeiSeptember 7, 2019 at 5:15 PM

    First of all, this post question is so interesting! I can't believe there isn't a memorial to native americans (what the heck) but I guess at the same time it is a reflection of how America sometimes covers up it's brutal history. I love your point about considering impact and importance from a personal perspective. I think that sometimes we get too caught up in the idea of a grand legacy (not that the idea in itself is inherently bad) and forget the fact that for that legacy to be achieved in the first place, there were many other players behind the scenes that made their own impact in their own way.

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  2. Vivienne Francois' BlogSeptember 8, 2019 at 10:28 AM

    First of all, love the design of your blog. Along with Allison I am absolutely shocked on to why we don't have a memorial for the Native Americans. I also found it powerful on your use of asking questions. Feeding off your question on who deserves to be remembered, I believe that everyone should. Memorials to me, that want to cover human history need to represent us as a whole because it all comes down to seeing each other with the same respect.

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