As we, the American public, hack through thickets of politically enhanced blogoshere-distributed demonstrations and debates about who we are — A people who embrace or reject others? A people weaned on vengeance or compassion? A people divided against others? Among ourselves? — most of us overlook one factor: the buffalo in the room.
About 2 percent of the population of this country is Native American. (No, nothing to do in the aggregate with that financially larded 1 percent.) The other 98 percent of us, whether ancestor-initiated us or newly arrived us, are from elsewhere. We came by hook or by crook, of free will or not, landing traumatized or relieved, hopeless or hopeful.
But we did not start out as “a nation of immigrants.”
We started out as trespassers.
By extension, we — certainly not the only such “we” in the world — are living on foreign occupied territory, are we not?
This is no white guilt screed, no p.c. apologia, but let us face facts, and what better time to do so than November aka Native American Heritage Month? Or, as a Lakota/Navajo wag of my acquaintance calls it, Rent-an-Indian Month. -Read More
