Lake Sakakawea, Williston, North Dakota- August 1
I am trying to sift through and make peace with the history of this land I have been traveling in. It isn’t easy. There is 21st century western United States, inundated with RVs and travelers hungry, like me, for beauty and inspiration. We travel these super highways cut through farmland and forests, traveling on cheap gas, 80 miles per hour, through dry farmland, irrigated with the blessed waters of these parts. There is so much to find fault with here, just today, forget about the past. I could criticize all of us for our consummate use of petrochemicals and our need to bring all the comforts of home with us in our recreational vehicles.
But, at the very same time, I am in love with the humanity of all of us finding our way to campgrounds to stay, layered in among each other, getting away from the norm and the routine of home- the children laughing and playing ‘til all hours of the night, the teenagers spiriting away to find some place to be different and apart, the parents and grandparents giving their families a taste of something different and exciting and together. There is something to love about this, too.
It’s harder to make peace with the past. Reading Lewis and Clark’s journals, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, stories of Idaho women, a story of a Cheyenne woman named Buffalo Calf Road who fought at the Battle of Bighorn, this land is steeped in tragedy. Once open and wild and in balance, there came so much betrayal and violence. And Lewis and Clark, as decent as they were, began the path to the flood of white settlers.
Today I passed over Bighorn, Tongue, Powder and Rosebud Rivers all sites of peaceful living near abundant game, turned into battlegrounds, where tribes were wiped out or forced to flee. I looked for the ghosts and imagined them on horseback or trudging through snow or watching for buffalo.
I couldn’t stop at the monuments and museums, too afraid that the stories would be about the whites- discoverers, settlers, gold rush fortune hunters, cavalry, ranchers. Instead, I sat for a moment at Bighorn, to consider what must have happened there.
It is too hard to be a white person with these stories. Or, as my friend reminds me, its hard to be homosapien with these stories- we have that frightening propensity for greed and power and destruction.
This once, I can not leave on an upbeat note. I am saddened by our history of violence and racism and 'manifest destiny'. It is not okay... in the past or as it unfolds today.
I remember returning home to Maine to bury my dads ashes and visiting one of the Native American museums Funded by a white rusticator with a love of indigenous peoples. My forebears were the first white settlers on these islands and I felt shame at what they did to lay claim to the land that wasn't theirs. And then I remembered the journey of my friend Katrina who was the descendent of white slaveowners and slave traders in Rhode Island. Her journey was one of facing the shame head on and inviting others in her family to do the same. The path drew them to the slave families and their descendants as they together did a healing process that brought them to Africa and the Caribbean. That journey was one of healing because of the directed acknowledgement of working through karma across generations.
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