About 15 years ago, I remember someone asking me “Max,
I didn’t know you were a historian?”
And I replied “I didn’t know either.”
I grew up not liking history, or so I thought. The history I was taught in school didn’t
make sense to me – didn’t explain to me why things are as they are.
The history I was taught in school wasn’t useful to me.
All these years later, I’ve written hundreds of articles
requiring thousands of hours of historical research, and I can more clearly see
and understand why things really are as they are.
Some people fear history, because they’re unsure what
they will find. Some see history as
liberating and vindicating, while others may see it as an indictment of who
they are…the legacy of ancestors rather forgotten.
This is all understandable, however history has already
happened and I believe its best understood as uncensored neutral information that
may satisfy old curiosities and shed light on current ideology, economics and social
structures.
Part of the research my book project Beyond Oppression:
Colonization and the Language of Heroes is a book I’m reading, entitled Columbus
and Other Cannibals. Written by an
American Indian named Jack Forbes, who taught at UC Davis, this book tells a
very different history of the United States than what I was taught in high
school. And the same can be said for the
video below by author George Monibot, entitled “The True Legacy of Christopher
Columbus:”
