Retirement in the Mix: Resisting "Gone": November 2014

Friday, November 28, 2014

Thanksgiving, again

It comes around every year. Our annual thanks-giving day. And, as I’ve written here before—last year and the year before that—each year, I find it troubling. That’s true again this year, with my dis-ease heightened by my recent immersion in the story of Sand Creek—also a topic of earlier posts here, and of an op-ed piece in today’s New York Times and an article in the current issue of Smithsonian .

For those of you who haven’t been following this blog over the course of my recurrent musings about Thanksgiving, here’s a short synopsis. When we were living in Massachusetts several years ago, we attended the counter-thanksgiving ceremony at Plymouth, MA, which was organized by descendants of the native peoples who lived in that area when the Pilgrims arrived. Their take on that first fall harvest feast and what it portended for the future was—predictably—very different from the schoolroom stories I learned. If the European settlers at that the feast could have looked into the future, they may have seen the glorious future of a great nation. From the Indians’ perspective, though, that feast was followed by the devastation of their way of life, the loss of their land, language, and culture—and the predictable consequences: poverty, disempowerment, and dysfunction in their fragmented and diminished communities. And still, despite all this, they survive.

At some level, I had known this, but I hadn’t given it much thought, joining in the annual tradition of an autumn celebration dedicated to giving thanks and imagining that we celebrated the bounty of the harvest, the cooperation of communities that might instead have been hostile, and the launch of a new nation. Giving thanks is good, I thought—why not have a day dedicated to that activity? I never thought much about the fact that by choosing this day and wrapping the event in this legend, we were commemorating genocide.

I suspect this is not unlike the experience of many people.

The first really serious challenge to this complacency was the counter-thanksgiving ceremony at Plymouth. Then came the deeply experiential workshop we attended at the Quaker meetinghouse last year, which I also described here, when the brutal reality of the white march across the continent became crystal clear to me. And then came my education about Sand Creek.

Over the course of the past few weeks, following in the wake of our bus trip to Sand Creek, I’ve spent time with the Sand Creek story in a range of venues. I’ve been reading a book about Sand Creek, A Misplaced Massacre, which is written from a critical perspective that shines revealing light on the complex governmental machinations and personal ambition that fueled Sand Creek and other anti-Indian actions of the late 1800s. I’ve also attended a spate of events that addressed this massacre. This year marks the 150^th anniversary of the Sand Creek massacre on November 29 and 30, 1864, so the Boulder History Museum has sponsored a series of commemorative events. The first was a museum forum featuring an interview with former Colorado Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell, who sponsored the legislation that led to the designation of the Sand Creek Massacre Historical Site. Then came a video of the play “Rocks, Karma, Arrows, Part II,” which examines Boulder’s legacy of racism and exclusion (with particular focus on the Indians), followed by a documentary about that play that included some really smart talking heads offering pithy analyses of these historical events. And the last was a “history on the screen” event that featured a talk by the man in charge of the Sand Creek Massacre site, followed by a screening of “Little Big Man,” the 1975 movie starring Dustin Hoffman as a white man raised by Indians who witnesses the growing efforts to eradicate and dispossess the Plains Indians--including Sand Creek.

Each of these events has added a layer of nuance to the story and to my grasp of the chasm between the legend I learned as a child of the origin and growth of this country and the reality of the genocide that is this nation’s origin-al sin. One of the messages I took away this time, a point made on at least two of these occasions, was this: History is open-ended. History continues. This story is still being written, but now, by us. The implicit challenge: what will we write? How do we change the terrible trajectory of this tale so that the experiences of the indigenous peoples of this continent don’t continue to be silenced.

After attending the Plymouth, MA counter-thanksgiving ceremony, we made a commitment that we wouldn’t do Thanksgiving again without honoring this legacy—a commitment I reiterated here two years ago. (Blogging about it on a regular basis seems to be one of the ways I do this.) This year, a perfect opportunity arose. When we were invited to Thanksgiving dinner by a friend, we asked to include a piece that would honor the true meaning of the day, and she willingly agreed. So yesterday, we began the afternoon gathering of friends with a ceremony that recounted the real history of the relationship between European colonizers and indigenous peoples and ended with reflections on commitments we all could make to moving history forward in a more honest way. We included music—some of it raw and painful (Buffy Sainte-Marie’s “My Country Tis of Thy People You’re Dying”) and some chosen to create a calm space for meditation (pieces by American Indian musicians Calvin J. Standing Bear and James Torres). Afterward, we shared good, thoughtful, open conversation, a fine meal, and serious belly laughs over a word game turned silly by our delight in the camaraderie—and maybe by the release of tension after a difficult, starkly realistic opening to this complicated day.

As we were leaving, one friend thanked us for the ceremony and offered an observation, taken from her work elsewhere, on the contrast between the intensity of the days beginning and the lightheartedness of its end: “We can only work as deep as we can laugh.”

We can't act as though this part of history didn't occur or doesn't matter. But honoring it needn't leave us morose and perpetually somber, which helps nothing at all. History is open-ended. It's still happening. Only now, we’re responsible for where it goes. We need to act, act as if it matters. Because it does. And then, we can laugh as deep as we work.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

To comment on this post:

If you got this blog via email, go to the blog website by clicking on the title at the top of this particular post.

To comment on this post from the blog website, click on "No comments" (or "2 comments" etc.) below. Comments from "anonymous" welcome.

Wednesday, November 5, 2014

We who believe

I don’t know about you, but after tracking the election results, I went to bed really bummed last night. Colorado’s Dem Senator lost to a standard-issue red-state candidate in this recently rather bluish-purple state. Nationwide, Senate seats, House seats, and governors’ palaces turned red by the score. Talk of a “Republican wave” was in the air before the night ended. Hardly the stuff of a celebratory evening—or a peaceful night’s slumber—in my very blue view. As we settled into a disappointed sleep, this thought crossed my mind “Was this partly a reaction against same-sex marriage?”

We woke up this morning still bummed, and my partner voiced the very same wonder I’d fallen asleep with: Did our success—i.e., the progress toward equal rights for LGBT people—contribute to this “wave”? Was this a backlash against that, as well as against folks’ total dismay with Washington’s intransigent inaction? As she talked about that possibility, I was reminded of a message about social change, one I’ve actually learned from her. It came to me when she reminded me of how awful 2004 was—Bush (aka “W”) won a second term and nine states passed anti-LGBT laws, all in one election. I said yeah, but now, just 10 years later, over 30 states have same-sex marriage. And my day brightened. This focus on the long-term process rather than the moment’s misery came from knowing something about her research on anti-LGBT politics. She calls this a “movement perspective”—the notion that social change needs to be seen as a long-term process, not a single event. We didn’t talk about this emerging thought right then, but sure enough, after her shower, she told me her mood had brightened as she considered—independently, before we had discussed this—the movement perspective. We’ve seen worse before, she said. We’ll get through this. The task is to not stop working.

Social change is like a movie—an epic movie. Any given event—one election, one victory or defeat—is just a single frame in that movie. The movement for social justice has its ebbs and flows, it sparkling wins and its dashing losses. That is how it works. But viewed in the context of the long progress of what Martin Luther King famously called “the arc of the moral universe,” yesterday’s miserable outcome isn’t so devastating. It was just a moment, not the movement. We’ll be back. And that’s the challenge: we must keep coming back.

Thinking along this line, I was unavoidably (and conveniently) reminded of Resonance Women’s Chorus’ upcoming concert: “We Who Believe in Freedom.” The title comes from the lyrics of Ella’s Song, a well-known call for social justice written by Bernice Johnson Reagon and sung by Sweet Honey in the Rock. It’s based on the words of Civil Rights activist Ella Baker. The line invoked in the concert title says, “We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes.” The concert is framed as an invitation to consider how we need to show up for each other—a call to being allies, but also, I realize, a call to persistence and dedication. This election feels dreadful, but we who believe in social justice cannot rest just because we feel bruised.

This morning (finally!), I learned some good outcomes from the election: among them, Colorado’s “personhood” amendment went down to defeat (for, like, the third time), funding for a broad range of “safety net” programs was approved, and multiple school bond issues around here passed. To top it off, the incumbent governor, a Dem, won a very close race, defying the national redwash. A tough election cycle, for sure, but even here, as early as today, there are glimpses of that long arc. Believing in freedom requires that we keep our eye on that and not let the defeats get us down.

With that in mind, I believe I’ll think of this concert not only as a celebration of allies and of being present for one another but also as a rallying call for us all to not lose hope, to stay with the program.

So join us on November 15, 7:00, at First United Methodist Church of Boulder for a free concert celebrating social justice and our realization that we’re in it together and for the long haul. For more information, click here to visit the Resonance website

Because we who believe in freedom need to keep showing up.