Speech #1040268333

President. aside from the original Americans who have lived here for thousands of years. Americans are travellers from other lands. From the most recent immigrants from Southeast Asia to the first Europeans who came as explorers and conquerors. from the Africans who were forcibly brought over as slaves to the Mexicans of Nuevo Mexico and the French of the Louisiana Territory who. through treaty or land purchase or conquest were brought into the American fold through a change in political boundariesall were once visitors to this great country. America is thus defined by the movement of its peoples. both internally and externally. This complex journey has shaped our national character and determined who we are as a nation. The grand progress to and across the American landscape. via exploration. the slave trade. traditional immigration. or internal migration. gave rise to the interactions that make the American experience unique in history. So much of who we are is bound to the cultures and traditions that our forebears brought from other shores. as well as by the new traditions and cultures that were created on arrival. Whether we settled in the agrarian West or the industrialized North. whether we lived in the small towns of the Midwest or the genteel cities of the South. we inevitably formed relationships with peoples of other backgrounds and cultures. It is therefore impossible to comprehend our joint heritage as Americans unless we know the history of our various American cultures. as they were brought over from other lands and as they were transformed by encounters with other cultures in America. As one eminent cultural scholar has noted: How can one learn about slavery. holocausts. immigration. ecological adaptation or ways of seeing the world without some type of comparative perspective. without some type of relationship between cultures and peoples. How can we understand the history of any one cultural groupfor example. the Irishwithout reference to other groupsfor example. the British. How can we understand African American culture without placing it In some relationship to its diverse African cultural roots. the creolized cultures of the Caribbean. the Native American bases of Maroon and Black Seminole cultures. the religious. economic and linguistic cultures of the colonial Spanish in Columbia. the French in Haiti. the Dutch in Suriname. and the English in the United States?