This morning, on Alternative Radio with David Barsamian, I heard an amazing woman speak for the first time.
I am always a bit shaken when I realize that I have been in the dark about more of my own personal shadow or our collective shadow. Sometimes, initially, I want to just go cry. There is this grief... I sometimes also feel exhilarated. WOW! -I am learning something new, connecting dots that I hadn't connected before in quite this way! Yes! Sometimes this takes me into territory that is painful or scary or may touch into my individual shame or the collective shame many of us carry. While that is not fun, the greater part of me wants more to know than to shrink away and say, No, I won't go there. I say, YES, I will go there! And I am inspired by this new person who is shining a light on a new pathway, a new piece of my journey that I get to take - yes, I get to take! - as part of my own unfolding and expanding and becoming less ignorant and a little bit more awake.
Of course, this is certainly about more than just me. This is also about my beautiful grandson, Oliver, and this world that I am leaving to him and to my sons, Brian, Kevin, and Matt. And that each of us are leaving to all beings. May we bring healing to ourselves and others!
Meanwhile, there is this amazing woman, Roxanne-Dunbar-Ortiz, who I heard speak this morning about another perspective, an indigenous perspective. Including the indigenous perspective related to Thanksgiving. It is not that this topic is new to me. But I was able to let in more than I have before. And my heart broke open. I am so grateful! That my heart can break open!
And I am getting her book and speaking up now, spreading the word about more of what matters. Could you imagine if each and every one of us made a commitment to try, several times a week or maybe daily, to speak up about what matters?! What an antidote to all the mindless - as opposed to mindfulness - distractions and violence and untruths and half-truths and narcissistic BS that permeates so much of what we hear day in and day out. Let's change that!
This piece is needed, I believe deeply needed for this day that many of us celebrate as Thanksgiving... without much deeper thought or awareness as to a larger picture, and the larger picture behind that, and on and on. This piece is for all native peoples.
And it is also for us all. Because we are all connected. We are all related. And we all need healing. We all need to heal the past that remains unattended, and through the violence of that great silence and neglect, lives on in the present causing harm to be perpetuated. We need to Wake Up.
And then maybe Thanksgiving can become something different, something greater than it has ever been before.
All My Relations ~ Molly
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| Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz |
An Indigenous People's History of the United States
The history of the United States is a history of settler colonialism—the founding of a state based on the ideology of white supremacy, the widespread practice of African slavery, and a policy of genocide and land theft.
Cases of genocide carried out as policy may be found in historical documents as well as in the oral histories of Indigenous communities. An example from 1873 is typical, with General William T. Sherman writing, “We must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to their extermination, men, women and children … during an assault, the soldiers can not pause to distinguish between male and female, or even discriminate as to age.
Euro-American colonialism, an aspect of the capitalist economic globalization, had from its beginnings a genocidal tendency.
The systems of colonization were modern and rational, but its ideological basis was madness.
How then can the US society come to terms with its past? How can it acknowledge responsibility? The late Native historian Jack Forbes always stressed that while living persons are not responsible for what their ancestors did, they are responsible for the society they live in, which is a product of that past. Assuming this responsibility provides a means of survival and liberation. Everyone and everything in the world is affected, for the most part negatively, by US dominance and intervention, often violently through direct military means or through proxies.
Jodi Byrd writes: “The story of the new world is horror, the story of America a crime.” It is necessary, she argues, to start with the origin of the United States as a settler-state and its explicit intention to occupy the continent. These origins contain the historical seeds of genocide. Any true history of the United States must focus on what has happened to (and with) Indigenous peoples—and what still happens.”
“A
must-read for anyone interested in the truth behind this nation’s
founding.”—Veronica E. Velarde Tiller, PhD, Jicarilla Apache author,
historian, and publisher of Tiller’s Guide to Indian Country.
“This may well be the most important US history book you will read in your lifetime.”—Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams
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