should pay attention to what is around us

I grew up in a town a few miles away from Chilocco Indian School. When I was a teenager, the school was closed. I remember reading about the parents protesting, but I didn't pay much attention. I had Native American classmates and friends. I had ancestors and other relatives with Indian blood. I heard stories about my great great grandfather petitioning the government to prove his Indian bloodline to receive land or payment, but even though I intently listened, the story didn't matter much to me at the time. I wish now I had paid more attention to the stories and the news as it's part of history. The Land Rush took place nearby my hometown, too, and there is a museum commemorating it. There's all this history around my hometown, but it wasn't taught to us in school. We were taught a "whitewashed" view of history. The Union won the Civil War, and then there were ugly Jim Crow laws, but we weren't taught about the lynchings of the innocent. We were taught the Indians were hostile, but not about Sand Creek or Wounded Knee. We were only taught history which portrayed our ancestors in a good, positive, patriotic light.
We should pay attention to the history around us, such as Haskell. How many have visited the museum at Haskell? I know I haven't after 20 years in Lawrence, but I should and will.
Although this post and this comment doesn't directly relate to anything we discussed in class, what I have learned for the past 5 weeks about the mistreatment of Native peoples by Euro-American settlers and the U.S. government is not surprising or shocking, as we knew it occurred, but sad and disturbing. And as you look at history, with Jim Crow laws, and the Civil Rights movement, you wonder why no one learned anything with 150 years of history to gain knowledge from. And as a sidenote, I have read that Billy Mills wasn't always treated nicely during his years at KU, even though he went to high school at Haskell. I hope we have learned better since then.