“Sell a country?! Why not sell the air, the great sea, as well as the earth? Did not the Great Spirit make them all for the use of his children?” ~ Tecumseh.

The celebration of Thanksgiving always leaves me conflicted.  Who can possibly object to the concept of being thankful, of declaring appreciation for all of the gifts of life? Since no longer working in a healthcare facility, the Holiday has become a four-day weekend for me, not just an opportunity to work a double shift at Holiday pay while the family traveled down south to enjoy a Jamerican feast combining the best of both culinary traditions.

This year in particular I have been delving into the stories, the legends, the lived experience of those First Nation people whose lives, traditions and rituals were so permanently changed by their ‘encounter’ with those ‘illegals’ who washed up on their shores and eventually declared themselves the rulers of the land.  There are so many untold tales, so many misrepresentations, of a people whose history has been erased.

One documentary which is available on PBS currently is entitled Native American, and this week the episode spoke about the destruction of the languages of the different tribes, and the efforts being made to preserve and expand its use.  As most of us who are English speaking immigrants to the US know, one of the easiest ways to assimilate is to lose your accent and blend into the background.  But get a group of those immigrants in a room together, and immediately you are back home, sharing jokes and stories in your childhood voice.  Jamaican patois, although mostly based on the English language, can at times be so incomprehensible to others, that they swear it is not even close to English! For me, being white but raised in Jamaica, my ability to speak patois is what changes the perception of those who don’t know me.  Instead of being a white woman, I am Jamaican, and thus part of the family.

For the Native Americans, the move from their native tongue to ‘American’ was not voluntary, it was not motivated by a wish to assimilate and blend into the crowd.  It was a forced, brutal deculturalization, the intentional process of ‘killing the Indian to save the man’.  Children were stolen from their families and placed in ‘Boarding schools’ (more like prisons).  Their braids were chopped off, their traditional clothes were burned, they were beaten for speaking their native tongue.  The atrocities of the ‘Indian Training Schools’ are by now documented.  In Canada the Residential schools have been exposed as sites of mass burials along with other acts of brutality, and the practice named for what it was: genocide. 

The resilience of a people to be able to overcome such callous inhumanity and reclaim their history, speaks to the strength of their spirit.  In the episode I watched this week, Dwayne, one of the youngest speakers of one language (and he was at least in his fifties if not older) was taken to the library which held recordings from 1890.  White Anthropologists, recognizing that if the policies of the American government were successful, decided to attempt to save as much as they could of the languages, songs and rituals of the Native culture.  It is indeed ironic that the people who represented the colonizers, those who would eradicate centuries of rich traditions and culture, would also be the ones to provide a way to secure them.

We watched as Dwayne heard for the first time, the voice of his ancestors, his elders, speaking his language.  He recognized the sound of the ‘Snake Dance Song’, and although the version he knew was not identical, it held the same meaning, the same message.  These phonographic memories had sat on shelves in a museum for over a hundred years, and now, through the magic of technology, they were being brought back to life, to be gifted to those who had inherited the DNA, and who were trying to honor and maintain the traditions that were almost lost forever.

One story told is of an island in Big Lake, Maine, a place of great spiritual significance to the Passamaquoddy people.  Named Pine Island, it was included in a treaty as belonging to the tribe in 1794, in recognition of their acts of bravery in the Revolutionary War.  In order to void that treaty, it was renamed ‘White Island’ (another irony) becoming a part of the state of Maine in 1821.  It has now been returned to the Passamaquoddy people, but not without an exchange of funds. In 2021 they were able to buy it for $355,000. 

In another part of the country, people in the Navajo nation are trying to ensure the survival and promotion of the Navajo language by dubbing a Star Wars movie in the Navajo language.  In 2013 they presented it in a Drive-In movie theater, and guests of honor were the actors who provided the voices for Princess Leia, Luke Skywalker and more.  They are currently tackling the classic spaghetti Western, Fistful of Dollars, ironically a Western with absolutely no Native Americans! ‘Finding Nemo’ has already been translated, so that Navajo children can experience that Disney classic in their own language.

When we lock ourselves into one version of history, dividing people into ‘goodies’ and ‘baddies’ we are doing ourselves and the people in the story a great disservice.  It is our responsibility as members of the human race to seek out the truth, to try to imagine the lives of others.  To this day, Native Americans feel mostly  invisible in this country.  Indigenous women ‘disappear’ at alarming rates. Indigenous people are more than twice as likely to be victims of sexual violence than any other race in America.  Because many victims are not found, the statistics are incomplete, as the name of the organization focused on bringing awareness to this tragedy, Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women implies.

So in the middle of Thanksgiving weekend, near the end of National Native Awareness month, we should give honor to the people who were here long before the Pilgrims, or the Spanish who made St. Augustine (Florida) the oldest continuously occupied city of European origin in the US.  We should make sure our children and grandchildren honor the stories of all people, not just the dominant culture, even if the public school system has been coerced into white-washing American history.  And if you haven’t already caught it, try to watch Reservation Dogs, a series depicting life in an Oklahoma reservation.  It will help you to appreciate the struggle, the laughter, the humanity of a people who have the same struggles as everyone else. 

Have a wonderful weekend, Family!

One Love!

Namaste.