Author: Sarah Rossien

Professor Sonja Thomas presented on the hiring of missionary priests from India in eastern Montana. This area is prevalent with opinions of anti-immigration, white supremacy, and anti-Native racism. Thomas explored settler-colonial history, Catholicism in rural Montana, and the migration of priests from India to Montana. Thomas began her presentation with current events surrounding her larger topic. She began by presenting images from yearbooks and reflecting on the Covington Catholic High School boys at the Indigenous Peoples March (https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/01/20/catholic-churchs-shameful-history-native-american-abuses/?utm_term=.65b4ee54f52d). This example leads to discussion about Catholic history through prep schools. This helped to orient the listeners and also set up an argument that Thomas would then return to at the end of her lecture. Thomas then continued into giving a basic overview of history of Native Americans. She explained that Native People were not considered citizens until 1924 and that the last state granted Natives the right to vote in 1965.

Following this context, Thomas explained her background. Thomas comes from an Eastern Catholic family in Montana. She grew up surrounded by Indian Priests, in a predominately white town, near multiple Native People’s Reservations. Her research began when she heard of people going on a Christian tour to India with an Indian Priest from Montana. Thomas decided to interview some of the participants from this trip and this research then turned to focusing on Indian Priests in predominantly white towns on reservations. Continue reading “Colonial Ideas in Rural Montana”

Jennifer Yoder’s lecture on ‘The Presence of the Past in Angela Merkel’s Political Discourse’ showed the ways in which Merkel has evolved as a politician since 2005.

Angela Merkel has served as Chancellor of Germany since 2005. Merkel was recently reelected for her fourth term on March 14^th, 2018. Merkel was the first female German chancellor, the first to have grown up in the former East Germany, and the youngest German chancellor since the World War II. Merkel is also the first chancellor to be born after World War II. This becomes particularly important in looking at her use of past events in her political speeches.

Merkel was not alive for much of the German history referred to in her speeches. Her identity as a young, female, quantum chemist makes us question her consistent references to the past in her political speeches. 67% of Merkel’s speeches between 2006 and 2015 invoke the German past. Merkel’s most referenced topics during this time were World Wars and Holocaust, the fall of the Berlin Wall, Germany’s GDR and communist past, and expulsions. Continue reading “Merkel’s Tactic”