What Is Writing About A'shared Past Complicated?

1. What is “America’s master narrative?” How does it compare to “a shared past?”

• The American master narrative is the history of the American nation told only from the perspective of the Native people.
• The narrative dismisses any experiences that do not conform to the “master narrative” and mainly focuses on America’s triumphs during the nation-building era.
• In the past, when the Native American narrative was told, they would be portrayed as savages, who would stop at nothing to end the Euro-American expansion, or victims of the foreign expansion.
• Compared to a “shared past”, the master narrative differentiates the history of Europeans and Americans and the history of Native Americans.
• The shared past incorporates how Indians shaped the land before Christopher Columbus arrived and does not ignore the fact that Native Americans played a key role in America’s history before 1492.

2.
What makes writing about a “shared past” complicated?

• Writing about a shared past is complicated because there are many sources that depict the history of non-Natives and Natives.
• A writer cannot only focus on the sources from one side of the narrative and must learn how to read sources without bias.
• The different sources of information provided to a writer can also complicate the shared past narrative. For example, the writer may not always trust the oral history shared between Native Americans. The writer may also omit several different sources of information, such as Native American charts or drawings that indicate a key part of their