America means different things to different peoples. We call it Turtle Island but there are old names for This Land that we need to re-discover. Ancient trade routes were the lifelines across the continent that delivered mysteries & wonders that our peoples adapted into society & culture. Today’s economies are in a great sense laid over these old trade routes. Because of my art and the communities that support Native Art & Literature, I travel today from New York (Montreal & New York City) along the rivers and lakes thru Ohio and Indianapolis (Pontiac & Tecumseh confederacies) and East St Louis (Cahokia) across Red Clay Oklahuman Land and Tejas to Nuevo Mexico. Contemporary New Mexico represents an ancient land of trade centers that connected north and south, east and west of Turtle Island. Anasazi, Chaco, Taos, Pecos and Ogap’oge that became Santa Fe.
“If no one discovered America – we would have to make it up.” – some European pundit “tweeted” this after Cristobol Colon’s stories lit Europe’s imagination on fire in the pages, of a new technology- the printing press. That media also spread “disinformation”. Fantastical tales of the strange New World continued for centuries and generations, and in a sense they still inhabit and infect the thinking of people when they talk or write about “America”.
Alex Jacobs 