Independent Study by Charles Cogan, MA, RC Northfield, MN
I like the tone and voice you strike and it’s great to have more people know about the [Keokuk Peace] letter project, the way it appealed to a sense of honor and peace, and how the references to Native people was still participating unwittingly in the ideological erasure of Native people. Michael D. McNally, Carleton College, Northfield, MN; leading US scholar and author of, "Defend the Sacred: Native American Religious Freedom beyond the First Amendment, 2020."
Charlie Cogan, 2022:This paper is an attempt to wrestle with the fact that we all have inherent biases and when we are unaware of these biases our decision-making is impaired. The example I am exploring is the case of the Rotary Club of Keokuk, Iowa, and its “Peace Pipe Letters” of the period from 1931-32 and the subsequent rediscovery of those same letters in 2016 when the letters were made the subject of intensive study on the topic of nationalism, a topic that was equally relevant in 1932 in Europe and 2016 in Europe and the United States."
