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Chris La Tray's avatar

This is such a great piece Nia that I feel like I could write an entire essay in response to it. I so admire your deep thinking and how you can coherently organize so many cogent thoughts. It is impressive.

This: "What does it mean to have freedom of mind, to not have your thinking and worldview shaped by propaganda?"

What saddens me is how deeply mired in this very thing a majority of Americans are without even realizing it. We have been duped into thinking it's only other countries who engage in this practice against their own people and yet here we are.

I'm also deeper into the mire of what the whole idea of what we consider "Indigenous" to be when I read about your connection to the landscape. Even AS an Indigenous person, the "connected to the land" bit is so much a part of the Native stereotype as anything else. There isn't some magic connectivity that happens to us just because we are Indians. If we don't exercise it, like anyone else, we become disconnected. It is a complex and frustrating issue.

Finally, that Mark Schoenfeld piece. I wish there was a bio attached to it, because there is a "Mark Schoenfeld" currently in the writing program at UM who I know is from Texas. I was paired to read with him a few weeks ago for their Second Wind series. He's a nice fellow, and I suspect it's the same person.

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Chris Schuck's avatar

Your reflections on nature interspersed with with reflections on your grandparents, and exile, made me think about the differences between land, place and home. I have always admired the connection you have with your land; how bound up it is in how you live, and how beautifully you write about it. But these descriptions are so remote from my experience, as someone who has always lived in or close to large cities on the Northeast seaboard (and spent hardly any time in the woods as an adult). I must confess feeling little or no connection with land, anywhere.

But what I do feel some connection with is place and home. Just ask any New Yorker - you won't hear anything about the land, or the rivers, or the sky. They love the skyline, the neighborhoods, the people, the noise, the culture, the chaos. Even the parks are loved as city spaces first and foremost. As for me, even if I never move back to New Haven, I'll always feel love for my dysfunctional but vital little city. Springsteen's "My Hometown" and all that. You have sometimes written of your time in Moscow, and your associations with certain places there. My very early years were in Washington D.C., and even today, if I were driving in on I-95 I know I would get that odd homesick feeling in my stomach as soon as I glimpsed the big Mormon temple right off the Beltway.

Maybe these are trivial examples and I'm splitting hairs. But it does lead me to wonder how much it matters what kind of land, and place, or neighborhood, you grew up in. Did I mention this book by Quill Kukla? It looks really neat - different from what you write about but for some reason it made me think of your blog:

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/city-living-9780190855369

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