Indigenous Day

It continues to stun me that my education was distinctively lacking in American Indian history. The thousands of years they lived autonomously in North America, made it their land (because it was!) and created culture so rich that it still exists today. Tens of millions native Americans existed when the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts. Maybe more than 50 million. Mostly gone, killed; certainly, herded away from their homelands to desert spaces totally alien to them and their way of life.

Our treatment of these people remains a blot on our history and so-called values. Stunning. Wicked. Evil to the core.

I get it that millions of Americans (all white and of European stock) were afraid of native Americans. I understand their fear of night raids and murders of farmers and their families. But the problem was caused by their leaders, their culture, their ignorance. All white citizens were complicit with the extermination of the Indians and their culture. Terrible. Awful.

And yet, we claim no knowledge of this and sit back in our chairs, sofas and recliners. Not our fault, we claim. We weren’t alive back then. No, we weren’t but our forebears were, and we inherit their sin of violence as much as we inherit their gifts of culture, history and wealth. It is ours to bear and repair.

If we study the art and culture that arises from today’s Native American peoples, we will better understand who they were and are, what they experienced, and how it affected them. We owe them that much, and so much more.

We were the immigrants then. Our relationship to them remains so today. Best we learn how to treat today’s immigrants, so they become a treasured part of us than enculturated enemies.

So sad. Very, very sad.

October 15, 2025

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