From Nelson Mandela to the Dawes Act
As a publisher focusing on history materials, we are always on the lookout for news items that point back to some of the primary documents we feature in our reference sets. An upcoming movie that is getting a lot of attention is Clint Eastwood’s Invictus, about Nelson Mandela urging the South African rugby team to win a championship and help unify the nation in the wake of the end of apartheid. Mandela is, of course, a titanic figure on the world stage from the latter part of the twentieth century. In my mind (and I’m hardly alone in this), his achievement in leading South Africa away from a bloodbath of revenge and reprisal following his release from prison and election to the presidency is nothing short of astonishing. It’s no surprise, then, that his 1994 inaugural address is included in our forthcoming Milestone Documents in World History. The address is a microcosm of the mindset that Mandela brought to his task as president: healing, forgiveness, building toward the future.
“The time for the healing of wounds has come. The moment to bridge the chasms that divide us has come. The time to build is upon us.”
In his analysis of Mandela’s inaugural address, our contributor Christopher Saunders draws some interesting parallels between Mandela’s address and Barack Obama’s inaugural address. As Chris notes: “When Obama delivered his inaugural address, many commentators in South Africa referred it to a ‘Mandela moment’ and reminded their readers of Mandela’s speech.” Readers who want to study our complete analysis of Mandela’s inaugural address can do so upon publication in a few weeks, provided their library purchases the set. If that’s not the case, readers will be able to download the analysis at MilestoneDocuments.com.
Another historic document that is in the news this week is the 1887 Dawes Severalty Act, which broke the final Native American land holdings into individual parcels and essentially completed the dispossession of native landholders. This week, the U.S. government announced that it had agreed to pay $3.4 billion to settle a longstanding lawsuit over its mismanagement of Indian land trusts–mismanagement that goes back to the Dawes Act in 1887. Anyone studying the history of land struggles between the U.S. government and American Indians should examine the Dawes Act. The full text can be read at MilestoneDocuments.com, and readers can also download our expert analysis for immediate access as well.
This kind of current events tie-in is soon going to get a major boost from us. As we move closer to the relaunch of the dramatically overhauled MilestoneDocuments.com, we’ll be starting a new continuous updating effort that will help readers stay up to date with historic documents in the news as well as new ones that are appearing. This effort will bring a fresh, continually updated face to our Web site and give educators a useful new tool with which to help students explore and understand the past.