National Day of Mourning
In Plymouth, Massachusetts Native Americans will be gathering today for a “National Day of Mourning.” Brian Moskwetah Weeden, chairman of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribal Council, spoke about it on on Boston Public Radio this week. (I read his words via NPR.)
"People need to understand that you need to be thankful each and every day — that was how our ancestors thought and navigated this world," Weeden said. "Because we were thankful, we were willing to share ... and we had good intentions and a good heart."
That wasn't reciprocated over the long term, Weeden added.
"That's why, 400 years later, we're still sitting here fighting for what little bit of land that we still have, and trying to hold the commonwealth and the federal government accountable," he said.
"Because 400 years later, we don't really have much to show for, or to be thankful for. So I think it's important for everyone to be thankful for our ancestors who helped the Pilgrims survive, and kind of played an intricate role in the birth of this nation."
I read another article today that invited readers to go to Thanksgiving gatherings and remind people that today is a day of mourning for Native Americans, who are thinking not only of their own cultures, but of indigenous people all over the world whose lives have been smashed in one way or another by colonialism.
It seems like an honorable thing to bring it up, but I can easily imagine how that would go in my family (and perhaps in many families). Everyone would agree. The room would deflate. Conversation would orbit the topic for a few minutes, and then it would stumble back toward its previous happy pitch, Maybe the gathering would break away into smaller groups as the thoughts sunk in.
I would feel guilty for having chosen the wrong time. I would see that these members of my family aren’t bad people, that they work very hard, love their kids, try to be honest and kind, and that their lives, too, involve pain and struggle, and I would know that today was supposed to be a bit of a release and a time to to enjoy connections with one other, and I would have taken from that.
Or perhaps the room would not deflate. Perhaps someone would say, “Yes, it’s terrible.,” and someone else would agree, and say, levelly, “We really need to think about this things,” and then conversation would proceed without having faltered, much.
At that point I would feel angry, and perhaps would want to say something more that might actually deflate the room — and then, see above. Or maybe I would just get angrier, but it wouldn’t shift anyone else particularly, except that they would be disturbed not by the message, but by me. Then there’s the crazy one again, all worked up again, at a happy family gathering.
It leaves me where I imagine it leaves many of us, that people will gather today and enjoy food and each other’s company, and they will leave, often, feeling warmer and happier. In DC, where I am most of the week, everybody on the roads will get a little kinder for a week or so — as I perceive that they always do, and which I attribute to so many people having drawn in closer to family, which does often appear to make us better people in some ways, though I know caveats abound.
And meanwhile, many people will gather around the country and mourn, because 400 years later, they don’t have much to show or be thankful for. And most people living in the U.S., perhaps, will be not much the wiser.
In the presence of this reality, it becomes possible to see the propulsive quality of our way of life. American living makes so much noise that we can create a warm holiday and become so absorbed in its rewards that every year we overlook the fact that it is also, not to put too fine a point on it, really a sort of dance upon graves.
That propulsive quality, that obsession with our own experience that prevents us from seeing the experience of others, is one of the central American sins, I feel. (I understand it’s something that we are known for internationally, actually, especially in Europe.) For all that may be good about America, it is a central characteristic of America is really is not good, and a way we are is called to be good.
We are called to see that America incurred deep debts, and that those debts have never been paid.
We are called to learn to be a people who are able to turn the volume down on ourselves in order to be in actual right relation with others.
And that, really, goes for all of us, I think, and it includes opening in ways that none of us want to. (Because, I don’t know about you, but I am rarely more sharply attacked than when I suggest to fellow Americans that they try to understand somebody that they don’t want to understand.)
For those who are open to hear, at least, it certainly seems worthwhile to give time and thought and heart for those who are mourning today. To let that reality really sink into us, simply for the sake of letting it do its work. We spend so much time thinking that we ought to create reality through our effort that sometimes we forget to just sit with the truth, with love and trust, and to let reality create us.
There is the invitation, too, to sit with the painful reality of giving thought and heart to everyone who lives in this nation. To hold all the stories. Even the stories of the third we’re pretty sure is evil.
Maybe I will find some way to talk to my family about this. Maybe not today, but somehow. As a way to more deeply participate in the national reckoning that obviously needs to occur. As a way for my people to be reconciled with people that lost so that I can have things that I have. As a way for my life to be based in a fundamental dynamic of humans being good to one another.
Toward a nation that is deeply based in people being good to one another, as we have absolutely promised we would be.
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(Note: NPR is actually making a bit of an effort to amplify Native American stories today. Details here.)