Heritage Months In General And Native American History Month In Particular

There have been times over the years when I have made an attempt to observe some heritage months as a way of trying to offer my feeble support to various groups. And then there were times when I'd forget about it, because I don't always stay as on task as I'd like to. Recently I learned that we're halfway through Native American Heritage Month. I'm behind on this, and all I can do is pass on this reading list of adult books for Native American Heritage Month from Flyleaf Books. 

Now I recognize that "celebrating" heritage months has a virtue signaling aspect to it. Look at me! I'm doing good by supporting marginalized writers and people! Oops! I just snapped my arm patting myself on the back!

At the same time, though, when times are...strange, shall we say...publicizing the work of groups whose work didn't always get much attention in the past is something positive we can do. It doesn't involve name calling or ranting, which I've never seen doing anything for anybody. 

Additionally, heritage months are a sort of temporal landmark. They are set-aside times, during which  we can focus on one kind of reading we may not have had opportunities to do in the past, simply because there are so many books out there.

So next year I'm going to have an objective under my community building goal to observe a number of heritage months. It's already in my bullet journal for next year. I'm already collecting titles. I will not be restricting myself to history but any kind of writing connected to the heritage month involved. One year I read this great zombie story for Black History Month. I cannot deny myself that sort of thing.

Also, Francophonie Month is not a heritage month in this country, but, damn it, this is Gail Gauthier's blog, and we are observing it here. Comprenez-vous?