History Lesson | Jeanette Armstrong | Reading from the Fringes | A 03

Armstrong was born in 1948. She grew up in an Indian reserve in British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley..

Armstrong discovered her talent for and attraction to writing at age 15 when a poem she wrote on John F. Kennedy was published in a local newspaper (Voices).

“The History Lesson” is told from the perspective of a third person objective point of view.

"The History Lesson" is a retelling of Columbus' discovery of America from the perspective of Native Americans. The poem portrays the arrival of Columbus and his men as an invasion and an encroachment on Native lands. It mocks the idea of Europeans bringing civilization to America and claiming they discovered the land.

The History Lesson” subverts the written history on how the White People brought about Civilization to the Americas. Although the historical chronicles concentrate on the affirmative consequence of civilization in the Americas, the poem repudiates the history lessons by giving prominence the antagonistic repercussions of the takeover of the Americas by the whites. First, the whites devastated wildlife through haphazard bombardment which cannot be written off as a practice of civilization as it would be satirical.

Furthermore, through the ‘civilization’ fatal ailments that the Native Indians had not been susceptible to prior to the conquest such as smallpox, reached the Americas and they devastated the Native Indians. Furthermore, the whites took part in activities that turned out to: “ burying/ breathing forests and fields/ beneath concrete and steel.” The poem puts dents on the widespread history about the eminence of Americas before and after colonization by arguing that the civilization furthered to the demolition of the natural environment.

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