So, last night I went to see/hear "Native Voices -- Secret History," a work by Ping Chong and Sara Zatz.
Essentially it's about Native Americans: their historical tragedy and contemporary problems. It moved me deeply.
For example, one stat that was mentioned was that in 1492 there were about 60 million Native Americans. Sure, they were for the most part catankerous among themselves, and didn't present to the Westerners who arrived much by way of developed civilization (from their perspectives).
So, of course, you know the story: we lied, we murdered, and we stole from them.
Know how many Native Americans there were in 1900?
Follow....
One million. Out of 60 million, there were one million.
And that's just the historical record. Last night the group (there were five speakers) presented their own stories of growing up in a country that tries its very best to ignore them, and continues to cheat them (I don't know whether you've been following the BIA scandals, but we've been stealing from them continuously). We continue to bottle them up, keeping them from practicing their religion, from honoring their ways, from being who they are.
So I listen to the theocratic republicans talk about how "this is a Christian nation," and it makes me want to puke. We are not now, and we have never been, a Christian nation. We got what we have by theft (granted, there was a lot of hard work involved in that theft, I'll give them that), murder and lies, and in that grand historical tradition we continue to abuse vulnerable populations: the ill, the old, the poor, our minorities. Perhaps we don't murder them outright anymore, but we continue to perpetuate a cycle of despair and defeat among them.
What "Christian" nation? Show me.
Imagine growing up in a culture that thinks of you as an historical oddity or a lesser sort of person; imagine that in order to be a fully functioning member of that society you have to renounce (or hide) your identity -- which of course, then makes trouble for you when you go to your people for solace. Imagine being a PhD, a principal of a school, and a person taking your blood assumes, once he knows you work for the schools, that you must be a custodian -- and says so to your face.
I know that those of us who are around today are not directly culpable for the transgressions of our forebears, but last night I felt a tremendous guilt and sorrow. I think it is compounded by what I see going on in politics today (screwing the poor and middle class, again, like that).
But one out of 60 made it from Columbus to 1900.
Shame.