Turtle Island Project: Prose Meets Policy for Stronger U.S. National Security

Adom Cooper published his essay from New Models of Policy Change's essay contest on redefining national security in Just Security.

As I have written for Just Security previously, “If the United States is serious about effectively addressing foreign policy and national security challenges and issues, it must do more to acknowledge, accept, and confront its flawed history.” But what would that look like? How can the U.S. concretely do more to acknowledge, accept, and confront its past and present? A new approach that brings those perpetual, uncomfortable discussions into communities through art could spark a new way to consider and discuss national security.

I propose the establishment of site-based and traveling displays across the country where people can delve deeply into the real history of the United States – the good, the bad, and the ugly. Think the Redfordations museums of HBO’s Watchmen meets Smithsonian satellite museums, as available as the local library. The project would spread the wealth of institutions like the Smithsonian outside the Beltway, ensuring that no one would have to travel far for the experience. Given COVID-19, each site would have digital programming to allow for socially distanced enlightenment. The wide distribution of this information could also help offset public school students’ shrinking exposure to history, social studies and civics.

I call this idea the Turtle Island Project. Here’s why: many Algonquian- and Iroquoian-speaking indigenous peoples of the northeastern part of North America refer to the continent by that name. Naming the project Turtle Island solemnly reminds us of the peoples who have been marginalized, mistreated, and murdered since the first Europeans arrived on the continent. That history matters, and has implications for the United States’ future among other nations. The Turtle Island Project will center that history and other, similarly overlooked aspects of U.S. history, allowing them to be remembered and integrated into the national self-understanding.