Exploration: The Myth of Migrant Discovery

A superficial reading of US school textbooks suggests that Turtle Island – today called ‘North America’ – was ‘discovered’ by European travellers and settler colonists. In truth, local communities had been living on the American continents for nearly 30,000 years, and Christopher Columbus wasn’t even the first European to make contact with the Americas.

Multiple Broadway shows buy into – and sell – the story of 1492 as the ‘beginning’ of American history. Many more replicate harmful stereotypes of Indigenous Americans as ‘savage’ while valorising white men’s exploration.