Some Wounds Must Be Reopened to Heal…

Posted 2007 April 29 Sunday 21:36 Jabberings (2)

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is coming on HBO May 27th.  Many may know the gist of the story, some have looked at the impact of the book since 1970, but a simple fact is that prior to this book the Lakota were only called the Sioux, the Diné were only called the Navaho, Apache was the only name for five distinct tribes…  That could go on for hours, days.

Don’t get me wrong: I don’t want to engender guilt or make you feel bad.  I’ve a much larger point, and it ain’t the one on my head this time.

The mini-point so far is they were seen as savages by the modern American populace that picked on the poor European-descended settlers.

Manifest Destiny…  A very ugly phrase.

One hundred and ten years of false impression that continues an irrational hatred against the displaced people who originally lived here, and gives the displaced remnants reason to irrationally hate back.  They lived here.  Where I sit and type, where my workplace rests, where the capital dome rises above the horizon like an alabaster cereal bowl topped with a golden chariot…

Unvarnished eyes must look at the past.  Yes, the Europeans were big meanies.  Those tribes weren’t nice either.  Scalping did occur, on both sides.  The indians learned it from the American settlers, and used it as an angry retribution against those very settlers pushing Indians out.  Entire towns were killed by war parties near the end.  The Indians became the monsters the Europeans had called them for decades already because that’s the only choice they had left.  If you can’t beat them, join them.

Mini point: To become a monster, there must already be a little monster already.

Before the Europeans even got into their ships the Indians prided themselves on their strength and raiding parties, just like the Europeans did, only it was a 6 to 7-hours turn westwards on this ball of mud.

It wasn’t all active violence either: The “Sioux” received that name because the “Chippewa” didn’t like them, and called them “Rattlesnakes”, because they crept through the grass, popped up and “bit” you unexpectedly.  In the mid- to late-1600s the French took that name seriously and called them that, eventually shortening it to “Sioux”.  (By the way, the “Chippewa” got that name because the French didn’t understand their name for themselves, and called them “The Mocassin People”, eventually shortening it to “Chippewa”.  And the French liked the “Chippewa”.)  On a much larger scale, the North American Indians in what is now Texas and New Mexico, maybe even further east into Mississippi, didn’t like those who would become the Aztec, and pushed them south because their barbarism was just too much.

Those facts are but part of the racial misunderstanding that predated the actual massacres and breaking of the peoples by peoples who, even if only in their imagination, were forced out of Europe.  The aggressed became the aggressors on the pre-existing peoples, who were aggressors on each other.  The Europeans just had better technology.  An iPod trumps a Victrola every time.

Mini point: Both sides were bastards, even before the American Indian genocide attempts.

Nasty bad crap has gone on by humans on humans since well before we bothered painting it on walls or writing it down or making movies.  There’s evidence that suggests homo sapiens sapiens were really big meanies to homo neanderthalis after leaving Africa and moving north into Europe…  There’s even evidence that those ancient ancestors ate them.  Hey, meat is meat, right? 

All continents but Antarctica, and just give that one time.

Mini point: Humans are inheriently bastards, have been forever. 

Moral superiority has always been the herald of trouble, the first sign that the people who were there first were living their own way only have a little longer.  The countdown started.

Each generation must learn this lesson and actively stop the hatred, in themselves.  Stop being complete bastards, and just be.

It doesn’t help that no one seems to be learning anything in public schools, mostly because entertainment is better than learnin’.

And yet, despite its extremely bloody birth, this nation has spurred on one wonderful thing.  Something so glorious that it should not be left out of this monologue:  a society/government that can harbor mercy such as Ghandi, and hundreds of others, taught.  We aren’t the only ones that found that, and we could still lose the path, but it’s been two hundred years, so it proves it can survive past one generation.

Granddaddy point:  Can you help it along?

Have fun, readers.  I’ma find a way to get the DVR to record something still a month away.  Miigwan sez peace-out.

Skåll!!!