I’m looking at a photograph of a young Native American girl who looks into the camera and poses the question “So you are saying that Jews deserve Israel because it is their ancestral land?”
Our original sins fundamental to the foundation of this country and our refusal to take responsibility as Americans are there in the eyes of this young girl. We have only to read the news to see that today we are confronted on a daily basis with longstanding injustices: the seemingly unresolvable Palestinian/Jewish conflict, the centuries of horrors that have preceded the Black Lives Matter movement and the ever–present reminders of the genocide of our Native American population
In these complicated times we are witness to disputes over land between Jews and Palestinians, a crisis that has been going on for generations. We are witness to the Black Lives Matter awakening where the truth is finally coming forward, that Black Americans were not allowed to own land and where their homes and businesses were routinely burned or destroyed. But we did nothing and do nothing.
Read the recent stories about the Black business district, known as Black Wall Street in Tulsa Oklahoma being burned in 1921. There is momentum to change the calculus on how we view slave owners including past Presidents of the United States. Will we remove George Washington and Thomas Jefferson from Mt. Rushmore? Where will be draw the line on history? History is critical to our understanding of who we are as a people. We should teach it in our schools. But we did nothing and do nothing.
These tumultuous times give us pause to think about what America has done to Native Americans. Nathaniel Philbrick in his seminal best-selling book, “The Mayflower, A Story of Courage Community and War” describes how we treated the Native Americans in New England even the first winter. We stole their winter cache of food, after they welcomed us and helped us survive upon landing in a damp swampy landscape. We remain willfully indifferent and unsympathetic.
Think what we did to American Indian tribes across the Plains? We slaughtered them, ravaged their women, stole their horses and took away their lands. It is tough to even write about it. The American Indian believes that land cannot be bought and sold, that land has a spirit onto itself. Think what we have done, as we paved our way across sacred lands, herded Indians into reservations, gave them alcohol and guns and Small Pox. We remain willfully unaffected and oblivious.
Why is there no outrage about what we have done to these people and their culture? Let’s put up a condo development on their sacred land. Or perhaps put a pipeline for oil through their land. As compensation, let’s give them the rights to have a casino. Let’s solve the problem with money.
The latest story from the New York Times is about three tribes in Northern California witnessing the major loss of salmon in the Klamouth River and its parallel to their loss of tribal community due to heroin addiction. It is a tough read but it is affirming what we are trying to say.
The repetitive and temporary nature of our outrage is characteristic of the problem. We are morally outraged and then we move on to something else. Will the Black Lives Matter movement help us revitalize our moral conscience? There are no reparations to make up for what we, as white pilgrims in search of a new land, have done to the original people of North America. Unfortunately, the culture of these people is an oral tradition with almost no written record. The written history we have is from the white man’s perspective.
What are the answers? What is pay back for generations of despair and loss of dignity? What level of reparation is fair and just for the tribes of Native Americans that lost their culture and way of life? There are no simple solutions but it is incumbent upon us to try. Perhaps we can give new meaning to the concept of ancestral lands The history of what we “American settlers” did to native cultures is worthy of much more research and discussion. Look at the history of the native Hawaiians? Once again, white settlers took the land, something anathema to the native Hawaiian. That is another story that merits serious consideration.
Clearly we feel strongly about this but we are not angry, sad, yes, but not angry. Even as we researched the subject we found few relevant articles on-line. In the spirit of looking ahead, the first step has to be that we rewrite our history books. Our history should reflect the true story of our multicultural heritage. We must open the window for the next generation of young people so that they will understand and respect the culture of America’s original people.
Lucy and Claudia
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