Last weekend I started reading Dee Brown’s book, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. It is a sad, condemning book, with story after story of broken promises and the steady, unapologetic eradication of one people group after another. I picked up Bury My Heart on the recommendation of my friend Dustin, and it fits within a growing desire to understand and (where possible) emulate the values and way of life of these peoples, particularly as I try to figure out how to interact with the land in a way that is cooperative rather than dominating and destructive.
I’m also aware of the fact (and I’d be interested to hear what people think about this) that I want to know these stories so that I can feel the guilt and remorse of being the beneficiary of America’s original sin. By the end of the introductory chapter, the list of names of cultures that are gone and the land that has been destroyed is overwhelming:
“On the mainland of America, the Wampanoags of Massasoit and King Philip had vanished, along with the Chesapeakes, the Chickahominys, and the Potomacs of the great Powhatan confederacy. (Only Pocahontas was remembered.) Scattered or reduced to remnants were the Pequots, Montauks, Nanticokes, Machapungas, Catawbas, Cheraws, Miamis, Hurons, Eries, Mohawks, Senecas, and Mohegans. (Only Uncas was remembered.) Their musical names remained forever fixed on the American land, but their bones were forgotten in a thousand burned villages or lost in forests fast disappearing before the axes of twenty million invaders. Already the once sweet-watered streams, most of which bore Indian names, were clouded with silt and the wastes of man; the very earth was being ravaged and squandered. To the Indians it seemed that these Europeans hated everything in nature – the living forests and their birds and beasts, the grassy glades, the water, the soil, and the air itself.”
I don’t know if this should make a difference, but the fact that these people lived the kind of communal, spiritual, and sustainable lifestyle that I want for myself (and hope is still available) makes their stories all the more tragic.
Another passage from the opening chapter:
“To justify these breaches of the ‘permanent Indian frontier,’ the policy makers in Washington invented Manifest Destiny, a term which lifted land hunger to a lofty plane. The Europeans and their descendants were ordained by destiny to rule all of America. They were the dominant race and therefore responsible for the Indians – along with their lands, their forests, and their mineral wealth. Only the New Englanders, who had destroyed or driven out all their Indians, spoke against Manifest Destiny.”
Here’s something I don’t know what to do with: my feelings of guilt often feel self-congratulatory, like I’m soo enlightened. (This seems like a common malady of social justice liberals – our concern goes right up to the end of the book we’re reading or coffee shop conversation we’re having.) But really I’m like the New Englanders – protesting injustice from a position of comfort and security that is built on the injustice I protest. I guess my hope is that reading this book will make me aware of the opportunities for action that are out there, even if they are (necessarily) small actions when compared to the injustice that requires them.
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