{"id":879,"date":"2021-10-10T22:58:26","date_gmt":"2021-10-10T22:58:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/?p=879"},"modified":"2021-10-10T22:58:26","modified_gmt":"2021-10-10T22:58:26","slug":"enough-time-to-grow-up-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/?p=879","title":{"rendered":"ENOUGH! Time to Grow Up (Part 1)"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

\"\"<\/a>We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union …<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\r\n

~The Preamble to the US Constitution, 1789<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal \u2026<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

~ The Declaration of Independence, 1776<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\"\"<\/a>But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way \u2026<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

~ Paul, to the Christians of Ephesus, 1st<\/sup> Century CE<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

After much of the year (and more) spent debating and legislating about our public schools, not just about mask mandates, but also how certain subjects \u2013 like history \u2013 are to be taught, it\u2019s time we all took a collective breath.\u00a0 Much nonsense has been made over the supposed teaching of \u201cCRT!!!\u201d, also known as Critical Race Theory, to hype this analytical perspective as the latest boogeyman or villain in some imagined culture war.\u00a0 And as the transition from observing this second Monday in October as Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples\u2019 Day, now seems an appropriate time to address the stories we tell.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

First. let\u2019s all take a collective breath and stop the hyperventilating.\u00a0 Critical Race Theory in NOT being taught in any public school at any level.\u00a0 Critical Race Theory<\/a> is an analytical approach that developed in a few law schools and gradually became a lens to analyze a number of separate, but interconnected, developments in laws and the application thereof, history and how we tell the story of us.\u00a0 Critical Race Theory may shape how people approach certain topics, the understandings they develop and share with others including within the context of instructional opportunities.\u00a0 However, the theory itself is not being taught outside graduate\/professional schools and select college classes.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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The confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers in an area known at B’Dote, a scared valley where the stories of the Dakota people begin<\/p><\/div>\r\n

Once we\u2019ve caught our collective breath, we really need to grow up!\u00a0 I am talking to white people since we have played a dominant role in shaping the story we\u2019ve been calling history, who have benefited from social structures that assume we are innately good, right, and above all else innocent of any harm or ill motive. We need to take a step back and take a good long look at what\u2019s been happening \u2026 the stories we were once told and have been repeating \u2026 the events we have observed (and maybe tried to ignore) \u2026 the voices calling for their stories to be heard, insisting that their experiences have meaning and are just a much a part of this country, its history and heritage, the narrative that has prevailed throughout our lives to this point.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Before leveling any charges of \u201cThis is re-writing history!\u201d, ask yourself this: Which is the true re-writing of history<\/strong><\/a> \u2013 putting back in chapters that we omitted, skipped over, or deleted all together OR cutting those chapters and events that actually happened from the story in the first place?<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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Commemorative Plaque recognizing the suffering and death of the Dakota people, imprisoned in their sacred valley at the end of the Dakota uprising in 1862<\/p><\/div>\r\n

One of the tasks of maturity is to let go of an idealized past, let fall the illusions that no longer serve us well, and come to terms with who we really are, both the good and shameful. At nearly 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence that launched a new nation from British colonial efforts in this land \u2026 and over 500 years from the on-set of interactions between Europe and this land, it is high time We-The-People grew up. The highly sanitized, shallow story we tell about European settlement and the emergence of a nation calling itself the United States of America is on par with imaginings we cultivate as children, fit only for the children to whom we routinely teach this story and call it History.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The bare facts are what they are. However, history is about more than just the facts. Facts alone aren\u2019t that interesting; the story we tell about the facts makes them interesting. In the story we have long been telling, unpleasant facts are treated as aberrations. Since they don\u2019t fit with the greater narrative we wish to tell, we leave them out or gloss over them so that they don\u2019t detract from the story we want to be telling.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

It is not re-writing history to tell a fuller story; it is claiming the fuller truth of our country\u2019s history and heritage. Telling the truth is an act of love. It is not hating our country to speak the truth of its faults and failings; it is an act of love \u2026 which is what patriotism, love of one\u2019s own homeland, means.\u00a0 In that spirit of love and truth, our history requires a fuller and more honest telling.\u00a0 Fullness and honesty require attending to the stories and voices of two populations that are very much a part of the fabric of this nation: the people who were already here when the Europeans came and the people who were dragged here against their will or choosing.\u00a0 Yes, I mean Native Americans and African Americans.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Clearly, this is a lot to cover.\u00a0 In this part, I want to discuss the people who were already here when European settlers and explorers first arrived on the shores of this land we all now inhabit.\u00a0 There will be a second part to discuss the people who were dragged here from Africa against their will as property.<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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Marker at Pilot Knob, a historic funerary and burial site for the Dakota people of the area<\/p><\/div>\r\n

First, the land the Europeans began to explore was not largely uninhabited, a vast unknown pair of continents that stretched out like a blank canvas ready for new creative actions. The land was very settled with numerous nation-states who had lived for uncounted centuries on these lands which we now call North America and South America.<\/a>\u00a0 There were histories already here that the Europeans and their descendants never bothered to understand. To act as though the history of North and South America began in 1492 is both factually and intellectually dishonest.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Our usual telling of American history centers the national origins in the colonial efforts of Puritan separatists who came to a new place to live and worship in their own way, free from the trappings of formality that were part of the Anglican compromise. We treat these Pilgrims as the sum total of British colonization \u2026 \u00a0and even more, as though the British were the only ones with colonial endeavors in the Americas. In truth, the Spanish, the French, the Portuguese, and the Dutch all had numerous colonial projects.\u00a0 To a lesser extent, Norway, Sweden, Russia, and Denmark also engaged in colonial operations. We fail to even tell the part that involves European activity in its fullness.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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Fall colors in B’Dote, now part of Fort Snelling State Park, near MSP<\/p><\/div>\r\n

The usual telling of our history allots only a marginal role to the native peoples of this land.\u00a0 They appear when convenient in the story and then quietly disappear when they are not needed.\u00a0 We tell of Squanto and his people who helped the Pilgrims survive their first hard years in Massachusetts Bay after they arrived at the worst time of year, lacked sufficient provisions, and had little idea how to grow their own food in the new place.\u00a0 That initial settlement might have followed the same trajectory as the original Jamestown in Virginia had it not been for the assistance of the native people.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The native inhabitants make a sort of appearance in the story of the American Revolution as the inspiration for the costuming for the Boston Tea Party\u2026 and then, they more or less disappear from \u201cAmerican History.\u201d \u00a0But in truth, the native peoples never went anywhere, at least not too far. Our telling of American history characterizes all native populations as though all were like the nomadic tribes of the Great Plains. In actuality, many of the native peoples were settled. They lived in communities and cities.\u00a0 They had long interacted with each other, had defined territories and trade routes, engaged in treaty making and conflicts.\u00a0 Although the European settlers regarded the native inhabitants as savages, these original peoples were actually very civilized.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Yes, the ways of dressing were different that European customs.\u00a0 Yes, the technological sophistication was not equal to European development.\u00a0 However, this was largely due to the different understandings of the relationship between peoples and the land.\u00a0 Because the native relationships to land were different from European customs, the ways they engaged in conflict and resolved conflict were different as well.\u00a0 Wars had been happening in the New (to Europeans) World, but these wars were waged differently than in the Old (familiar to Europeans) World. As a result, war had not been the engine of technological innovations in the Americas as it had been in Europe.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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Daughter Trees from cuttings taken from the Four Grandmothers in B’Dote, the sacred valley of the Dakota<\/p><\/div>\r\n

The native people were not uncivilized nor were they ignorant or stupid \u2013 the European settlers were merely dismissive of what they did not readily understand. Native communities had complex linguistics, literature (mostly oral story telling), arts, laws and mores for community behaviors, commerce and trade routes.\u00a0 Much as we want to think the of the original inhabitants of the land naively trading huge amounts of land for shiny trinkets, that is a gloss intended to cover over the guilt of the European colonizers and settlers.\u00a0 In reality, the native people understood treaties very well and expected both sides to honor those agreements.\u00a0 Natives regularly pushed back to claim their rights when the nascent United States government (and other conquerors) broke those agreements.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The desire for more lands, which would require ending or at least renegotiating British treaties with the native peoples, was at least part of the impetus for the American Revolution. Religious freedom had nothing to do with it by the time the Continental Congress formed to explore a unified American-based governance among the British colonies.\u00a0 The ban on settlements west of the Allegheny Mountains was one of the numerous issues that motivated the revolutionaries, including George Washington. Ascribing religious motivations seems more lofty and gives the now dominant narrative some sense of divine favor.\u00a0 However, the true motivations were the usual commercial ones: land \u2026 and profits from the land.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

American self-governance led to a long history in which the national government made a series of treaties with native people and then changed or broke those treaties entirely when national ambitions required more land. Native nations were typically given the choice of accepting the changed terms of a treaty or having the changes wrought upon them by military force. Even with the reservation system, Native peoples are still among us on their ancient homelands, in our cities and towns. The least step all of us can take is to honor the truth of our shared heritage and acknowledge the first peoples of the places where we live.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Although not universally true, many native peoples spoke (and continue to speak) of this land as \u201cturtle island.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0 This suggests some sharing of knowledge and information between the various nations and their territories that developed into a fairly accurate picture of the contour of what is now known as the North American continent.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Who was living on the land where you call home before the colonizers from Europe arrived?\u00a0 What stories did they tell of their origins?\u00a0 What did they know about the local environment that we late-comers never bothered to learn?\u00a0 There are a number of ancient maps of this continent that show the difference peoples who populated these lands as far back as the stories go.\u00a0 Here\u2019s one you might look at.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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Location of the concentration camp where the Dakota were imprisoned; the red ties are for prayers during a ceremony of commemoration<\/p><\/div>\r\n

Who from the original peoples are still in your area today?\u00a0 They did not all go away; they are not all living on reservations.\u00a0 Here\u2019s a fun fact: as of the 2000 Census, New York City has the highest population of Native Americans than any other city in the country<\/a>.\u00a0 What stories do they have to tell us today?\u00a0 For a look at how Natives tell their stories of who they are today and how it came to be this way, check out the website of the 400 Years Project<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

With recent discoveries of mass burials on the site of former boarding schools where Native children were sent, often contrary to the wishes of their families, to be \u201ccivilized\u201d (which is to say, made into White people), that effort to eradicate Native cultures and communal identity is coming to light again<\/a>.\u00a0 The intentions of the people who operated the schools don\u2019t matter now; the outcomes do.\u00a0 There is a legacy of pain that runs through many native communities even generations later.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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Remembering and Honoring …<\/p><\/div>\r\n

As this terrible chapter in American history and native experience is investigated further \u2026 as more of these children\u2019s bodies are found and returned to the lands of their ancestors, what traditions and stories and practices are bring brought into view?\u00a0 How might we learn in this moment to honor the actual history of the land that we are privileged to call home<\/a> \u2026 or even believe is ours?\u00a0 How can we honor the memory and legacy of those who were here before our ancestors ever arrived?\u00a0 We acknowledged that the land on which we live \u2026 gather \u2026 work \u2026 was first the home of \u2026 who?\u00a0 What was the name the people who first lived there gave themselves?\u00a0 Do you know?\u00a0 How might you find out?<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

What places in your area were considered sacred, set apart, holy by the people who first lived there? \u00a0All the photos accompanying this post were taken at locations sacred to the Dakota people in the Twin Cities area.\u00a0 To the original people of the area, the world began at the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers.\u00a0 Having learned those stories thanks to Jim Bear Jacobs and his Healing Minnesota Stories program<\/a>, I had a greater appreciation for the area where I lived, worked, and commuted through for almost ten years.\u00a0 I haven\u2019t learned the similar stories in my new place \u2013 yet.\u00a0 But I will.\u00a0 Where can you learn those stories in your land?<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

In addition to links in the post, here are some other sources to explore:<\/p>\r\n

Native America Calling<\/a> – A call-in radio program described as “your national electronic talking circle. The program takes calls when it airs live (1-2pm ET); archived shows are available on the website and through podcast outlets.<\/p>\r\n

News sites from a Native perspective — here are a couple:<\/p>\r\n