This TT Award winner will extend his usual coverage of the Sherman Alexie classic to address how dominant cultural narratives reinforce who is considered American—and who isn’t.
Last spring, our high school performed The Crucible, Arthur Miller’s play about the Salem witch trials (also an allegory of the witch hunts of McCarthyism). It’s one of my favorite plays. Watching the performance, I was struck by the character of Reverend Hale.
I held up the front page of our college newspaper and asked my first-year journalism students if any questions came to mind as they looked at the photographs of candidates running for president and vice president of our student government. It’s a multimedia storytelling class and the assignments for the week were about analyzing and taking photographs.
In the years since they graduated from middle school, several of my former students earned the prestigious rank of Eagle Scout. I was proud of them. I read their stories in the local paper and was inspired by the various ways in which these young men improved our community. Each time, their accomplishments and selflessness impressed me. Earning the highest rank in Boy Scouts of America is an admirable achievement.
Three years ago, a young activist used social media to put her idea into practice. Now her effort to honor Native people is an international event—and it keeps growing.