207: Engaging with History to Help Make Sense of Today
“It's really hard to understand and articulate all of the different factors that can shape our experiences at any given moment of time. So the work of history is not really clear-cut.” — historian, Donna D. Curtin Ph.D
Today’s guest is historian, Donna Curtin, Ph.D. She is the Executive Director of the Pilgrim Hall Museum in Plymouth, MA. Pilgrim Hall is “the oldest continuously operating public museum in the country and America’s museum of Pilgrim possessions. Pilgrim Hall’s collection of 17th-century artifacts, some of which came on the Mayflower, illuminates the story of the early Plymouth Colony.”
Our conversation explored several areas:
• How the Museum helps visitors separate facts from fictional accounts of the voyage and settlement.
• How the colonists interacted with the indigenous population, and how indigenous scholarship is helping to develop a new, more inclusive perspective of the colonial period and today.
• How white European settlers and indigenous people held different beliefs regarding land ownership and usage.
• What the role and value of history are in working with high school students today.
• How history can help us analyze and understand information and have some legitimate way of assessing its origin, source, and factuality.
“Doing the historical work at Pilgrim Hall Museum – separating these legends, these many, many layers of accumulated popular belief from more documented sources of information about what we might consider the real experiences of this group – is part of our ongoing work.”
Connect with Dr. Curtin
Referenced
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Show Credits
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