Posts For History Class

January 26 1988 - Burnum Burnum plants the Aboriginal flag at the cliffs of Dover, claiming England for the Aboriginal peoples of Australia, exactly 200 years after Arthur Phillip claimed Australia for the British. [video] The full Burnum Burnum Declaration:

I, Burnum Burnum, being a nobleman of ancient Australia, do hereby take possession of England on behalf of the Aboriginal people. In claiming this colonial outpost, we wish no harm to you natives, but assure you that we are here to bring you good manners, refinement and an opportunity to make a Koompartoo - ‘a fresh start’. Henceforth, an Aboriginal face shall appear on your coins and stamps to signify our sovereignty over this domain. For the more advanced, we bring the complex language of the Pitjantjajara; we will teach you how to have a spiritual relationship with the Earth and show you how to get bush tucker.

We do not intend to souvenir, pickle and preserve the heads of 2000 of your people, nor to publicly display the skeletal remains of your Royal Highness, as was done to our Queen Truganinni for 80 years. Neither do we intend to poison your water holes, lace your flour with strychnine or introduce you to highly toxic drugs. Based on our 50,000 year heritage, we acknowledge the need to preserve the Caucasian race as of interest to antiquity, although we may be inclined to conduct experiments by measuring the size of your skulls for levels of intelligence. We pledge not to sterilize your women, nor to separate your children from their families. We give an absolute undertaking that you shall not be placed onto the mentality of government handouts for the next five generations but you will enjoy the full benefits of Aboriginal equality. At the end of two hundred years, we will make a treaty to validate occupation by peaceful means and not by conquest.

Finally, we solemnly promise not to make a quarry of England and export your valuable minerals back to the old country Australia, and we vow never to destroy three-quarters of your trees, but to encourage Earth Repair Action to unite people, communities, religions and nations in a common, productive, peaceful purpose.

~ Mask for a Horse's Head.

Period: Early Iron Age

Culture: Pazyryk

Date: 5th-4th century B.C.

Place of origin: Altai Territory, Pazyryk Boundary, the Valley of the River Bolshoy Ulagan; Archaeological site: Pazyryk Barrow No. 5 (excavations by S.I. Rudenko, 1949)

A new study has detected a large, rectangular platform made of earth in southern Mexico with the use of lidar technology. (Lidar employs lasers to generate 3-D models of vegetation-covered terrain.) The structure, thought to have been built by the Maya between 1000 and 800 BCE, measures more than 4,500 feet long by 1,300 feet wide and up to 50 feet tall.

Catherine Palace, Pushkin, St. Petersburg III, 2014,

Fun Fact ✨

Madame C.J. Walker was the first Black person in the US to own a swimming pool 🙂

James Baldwin (1924-1987).

American writer.

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He was an American novelist, playwright, essayist, poet, and activist. His eloquence and passion on the subject of race in America made him an important voice, particularly in the late 1950s and early 1960s, in the United States and, later, through much of western Europe.

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Baldwin's novels, short stories, and plays fictionalize fundamental personal questions and dilemmas amid complex social and psychological pressures. Themes of masculinity, sexuality, race, and class intertwine to create intricate narratives that run parallel with some of the major political movements toward social change in mid-twentieth-century America, such as the Civil Rights Movement and the Gay Liberation Movement. As such, Baldwin's protagonists are often, but not exclusively, African American, while gay and bisexual men also frequently feature as protagonists in his literature. These characters often face internal and external obstacles in their search for social and self-acceptance. Such dynamics are prominent in Baldwin's second novel, Giovanni's Room, written in 1956, well before the Gay Liberation Movement

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After graduation from high school, he began a restless period of ill-paid jobs, self-study, and literary apprenticeship in Greenwich Village, the bohemian quarter of New York City. He left in 1948 for Paris, where he lived for the next eight years.

In 1957 he returned to the United States and became an active participant in the civil rights struggle that swept the nation.

From 1969, he lived alternatively in the south of France and in New York and New England.

Though Baldwin continued to write until his death, none of his later works achieved the popular and critical success of his early work.

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In 1949 Baldwin met and fell in love with Lucien Happersberger, a boy aged 17, though Happersberger's marriage three years later left Baldwin distraught.

Baldwin died from stomach cancer.

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Famous works:

The Fire Next Time

Giovanni’s Room

Another Country

Notes of a Native Son

Nobody Knows My Name