Yamaye: Where are we?

month is National Native American Heritage Month. And next year, 2026, is America’s 250th birthday. So, here’s an…

ICE-BREAKER!

Where are we geographically?

Was my ice-breaker question to my elementary through postgraduate students. Then my follow-up introduction was, “What if I told you that we were in “Asia Extended’?”

As far as one can see, this hemisphere was populated by Asians over 50,000 years ago.

So, the “LIES MY TEACHER TOLD” US WAS FRAMED…“America is a suburb of Europe”

But, we’re not in Europe as is emphatically stated on a wall in Jamestown, Virginia “Where America began” in 1607 with the arrival of Captain John Smith and further established in 1792’s American Revolution. So,what’s true? (For more accurate information, read these books).

BOOKS TO READ

Aldo this book below which gives a more accurate description of our hemisphere’s highly developed Indigenous history.

THEN, RESEARCH ANCIENT AMERICA!

Above: Built in grid layout, is the ancient Mexican city of Teotihuakan. One of the world’s largest cities established around 100 BCE with a population estimated at 125,000–200,000 people and a significant sphere of influence throughout Mesoamerica.

Teotihuakan's layout.

Above: The world’s oldest pyramid, Templo Mayor (Great Temple) at the Sacred City of Caral-Supe, dating to around 2600 BC. Caral is the oldest known civilization in the Americas, and the pyramids there are 200 years older than the Egyptian step pyramid designed by Imhotep the architect, making Peru’s Carla, the oldest monumental pyramids in the world.

Above: The Mayan pyramid of Chitzen Itza, in Mexico’s Yucatán, built 1,092 years before Columbus arrived in the Caribbean. When this pyramid city was built, Europe was the chaotic yet transformative period known as the Early Middle Ages, Buildings were mostly villages made of wood. The continent was a patchwork of developing civilizations, with the massive Carolingian Empire in the West, the powerful Byzantine Empire in the Southeast, and a strong civilizing Islamic Caliphate in Iberia or Spain in 711 AD.

UNCEDED TERRITORY

Here’s a new way of thinking and acknowledging this people who were forcefully, by war, and imported disease, “gave us” their lands! However, in reality, this “transfer” was unceded land, which refers to territory that was never surrendered by the Indigenous peoples who lived there, through treaties or other agreements.

Q: Do, where are we Geographically?

Or, exactly where did America begin?

Ask the average American this question and you may get the answer they were mistakenly taught.

This misguided answer is on a wall in Jamestown Festival Park, Virginia, on a large sign which misguidedly states,

“America is a suburb of Europe”.

The Irony?

Is that the sign sits the unceded territory of the historic Powhatan Paramountcy!

Remember Pocahontas? The little 11-year-old minor daughter of Wahunsenachawh, the werowance of the 32-34 nation Powhatan Paramountcy?

OTHER POPULSR LIES

The 1607 arriving at this spot in the Americas F ounc it difficult to pronounce Wahunsenachawh, do they called him by his title, “Powhatan”, meaning “Principal Leader”.