I am not, by my nature, a revolutionary. I grew up in a relatively conservative family, flanked by a deeply evangelical Christian extended family from which my mother had passively extracted herself, and a silently secular fathers’ side, in which all cultural traditions were sacred as long as they involved food. My family and parents did not teach me to question the status quo, but to work hard within it to survive. And while my schools visibly engaged in progressive causes (mostly the preservation of salmon, trees, and Native land and culture), these were not presented to us as demands for change, but opportunities for my peers and I to superficially depict nature on paper, poster board, and canvas.
How to Anglicise a Country: The Strange Story of Hawaii
In 1874, President Ulysses S. Grant hosted the first ever state visit to the United States by a foreign head of state. King David…