What a gift to have the exact topic that's been rolling around inarticulately in your brain for the past few days put to writing just perfectly. Jeez this is well-done.
And here I was hoping you specifically would have an answer for me! I did talk about this with a friend on a distanced walk the other day. She works with slightly older conservative white railroad guys all day. She talked about how the fear of change when things have always been a certain way, and you feel attacked when you've always been accepted as the norm, is something maybe we just can't grasp because, being female, we've never been in that position.
You know how much I think of this too, Nia. The flip side also from the Indigenous perspective is this: what do reparations look like? Is it all about money? Is it about getting land back? It is all so complicated.
Mark Charles’s view is that it’s simple: give the land back. (This has been done in small—very small—areas in Canada.) On a personal level, I don’t own any of the land my family was given so what does that look like? A percentage of my income to affected nations? Is that too much of a pittance (with my income, maybe)? But I’ve had this convinction for years: everything that makes me who I am, everything that I feel closest to, comes from this Montana heritage of some kind of relationship with this place. Therefore, I owe everything to it. What that looks like I don’t know but maybe the answer will come.
When I think about all the Indigenous people worldwide who’ve been subjected to this—Sami in Scandinavia, Ainu in Japan, Celts in Britain—is the bigger question about restoring a way of life?
Rethinking this--I was thinking about it all from my personal experience and sense of responsibility, but it's got to be bigger than that. Gorsuch's recent opinion in McGirt v. Oklahoma was very interesting in this respect--on both sides because he wrote the opinion that basically said the entire eastern half of Oklahoma belongs to the Creek nation, but also that Congress has the power to disestablish the reservation if it wanted to use it (as opposed to the state of Oklahoma, which he said was trying to claim the power but didn't have it).
Therein lies a huge part of the problem. In trying to reframe any idea of "ownership" and "giving back" through the colonial lens flies utterly in the face of pre-colonial Indigenous ideas about ownership. It's like trying to turn an apple back into an orange. And frankly that whole, "Congress has the power...." bit makes me want to pick up a rifle.
Gorsuch has this line in there: "That would be the rule of the strong, not the rule of law." Isn't that the entire point? We say the U.S. is a nation of laws, but it started with a violent takeover that has never stopped. You can't just say "now we rule by law not force" when everything is the way it is due to force and violence. It's why libertarians drive me nuts, incidentally. The whole "don't hurt people and don't take their stuff" thing -- "my stuff" or "our stuff" was always taken from someone else. Every speck of owned land is a taking from everyone else. You can't get around that.
The economist Henry George said in his book that the ownership of land was one of the causes of all the problems in the world. He not only said that people shouldn't be allowed own land privately or profit from it, but they shouldn't be able to inherit it. When told that this was unjust he replied that the owning of the land was the original injustice because it had to be taken from everyone else, and just because it had gone on for centuries didn't mean that the injustice should continue for any further generations.
(Ownership and all the problems it causes is the subject of the book proposal I'm working on, so my head has been mired deep in the weeds. Ownership is the wildest thing in the world, maybe the craziest thing humanity has ever conceived.)
Thank you for catalyzing these discussions, Antonia. Indeed:
"The fact that so many in our society—tens of millions of people—are determined to stick to the varnished, paper-thin story of American exceptionalism, the fact that they’re threatened by efforts to teach real history, is something beyond exhausting."
What a gift to have the exact topic that's been rolling around inarticulately in your brain for the past few days put to writing just perfectly. Jeez this is well-done.
And here I was hoping you specifically would have an answer for me! I did talk about this with a friend on a distanced walk the other day. She works with slightly older conservative white railroad guys all day. She talked about how the fear of change when things have always been a certain way, and you feel attacked when you've always been accepted as the norm, is something maybe we just can't grasp because, being female, we've never been in that position.
You know how much I think of this too, Nia. The flip side also from the Indigenous perspective is this: what do reparations look like? Is it all about money? Is it about getting land back? It is all so complicated.
Mark Charles’s view is that it’s simple: give the land back. (This has been done in small—very small—areas in Canada.) On a personal level, I don’t own any of the land my family was given so what does that look like? A percentage of my income to affected nations? Is that too much of a pittance (with my income, maybe)? But I’ve had this convinction for years: everything that makes me who I am, everything that I feel closest to, comes from this Montana heritage of some kind of relationship with this place. Therefore, I owe everything to it. What that looks like I don’t know but maybe the answer will come.
When I think about all the Indigenous people worldwide who’ve been subjected to this—Sami in Scandinavia, Ainu in Japan, Celts in Britain—is the bigger question about restoring a way of life?
It makes my head, and my heart, hurt.
Rethinking this--I was thinking about it all from my personal experience and sense of responsibility, but it's got to be bigger than that. Gorsuch's recent opinion in McGirt v. Oklahoma was very interesting in this respect--on both sides because he wrote the opinion that basically said the entire eastern half of Oklahoma belongs to the Creek nation, but also that Congress has the power to disestablish the reservation if it wanted to use it (as opposed to the state of Oklahoma, which he said was trying to claim the power but didn't have it).
Therein lies a huge part of the problem. In trying to reframe any idea of "ownership" and "giving back" through the colonial lens flies utterly in the face of pre-colonial Indigenous ideas about ownership. It's like trying to turn an apple back into an orange. And frankly that whole, "Congress has the power...." bit makes me want to pick up a rifle.
Gorsuch has this line in there: "That would be the rule of the strong, not the rule of law." Isn't that the entire point? We say the U.S. is a nation of laws, but it started with a violent takeover that has never stopped. You can't just say "now we rule by law not force" when everything is the way it is due to force and violence. It's why libertarians drive me nuts, incidentally. The whole "don't hurt people and don't take their stuff" thing -- "my stuff" or "our stuff" was always taken from someone else. Every speck of owned land is a taking from everyone else. You can't get around that.
The economist Henry George said in his book that the ownership of land was one of the causes of all the problems in the world. He not only said that people shouldn't be allowed own land privately or profit from it, but they shouldn't be able to inherit it. When told that this was unjust he replied that the owning of the land was the original injustice because it had to be taken from everyone else, and just because it had gone on for centuries didn't mean that the injustice should continue for any further generations.
(Ownership and all the problems it causes is the subject of the book proposal I'm working on, so my head has been mired deep in the weeds. Ownership is the wildest thing in the world, maybe the craziest thing humanity has ever conceived.)
Every moment of every day.
Great writing as always
Thanks, Papa :)
Thank you for catalyzing these discussions, Antonia. Indeed:
"The fact that so many in our society—tens of millions of people—are determined to stick to the varnished, paper-thin story of American exceptionalism, the fact that they’re threatened by efforts to teach real history, is something beyond exhausting."
I don't know if I'm catalyzing anything! Just hoping that if we crack open these things maybe the future will be better ...