I've been reading a book about Cahokia, the great ancient Native American city around St. Louis, Missouri. It makes me want to visit, and see the ruins and what has been excavated, even though most of the huge mounds have eroded or been removed. It was a site like Teothihuacan outside Mexico City, but during the Eisenhower years freeways and subdivisions were built over a lot of it. Americans think they have to get on a plane to see ancient ruins, but Mesa Verde, Chaco Canyon, Canyon de Chelly, and many other sites are still preserved in the Southwest, due to dryness and lack of aggressive development, as is the case in Egypt I feel there has been subconscious vested interest in not seeing Native peoples here as having anything cultural to offer, because they the guilt of their decimation is lessened.
But we have these treasures in our own backyard, and we often don't respect our own history. History here didn't begin in the 1700's, it began over 10,000 years ago.
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