I can’t get some of what I’ve read and learned recently out of my thinking. I just can’t. It seems that some initially unrelated things are meant to work together in some way as to give meaning. If only I knew what that significance were and/or how to put the puzzle pieces together! Since I don’t, I’m just going to take up where I left off last time. I’m going to do a “prequel”, if you will, to Personal Reality Show.
Saturday night we watched the end of the movie Deep Impact. We had never seen the movie, but it wasn’t difficult to figure out the plot had to do with a meteorite hitting earth. I can never make it all the way through a movie until 11:00 PM. Never. But, of course, I did last night. Seeing some of earth destroyed by a tsunami of unheard size and strength was awful, truly! It made me slightly sick on my stomach. I felt like my breathing was too short and too fast. I certainly felt anxious. I had hated seeing the resulting scenes from Japan’s tsunami on television news. But seeing it in movie form gave me the mental picture of what it had been like for the poor Japanese victims during the tsunami itself. Yet, at the same time it gave me, what I consider, an apt description of what the knowledge I’ve gained in the last month or so has done to/for me. It, just like that meteorite colliding with earth, has made a deep impact on my heart to the degree it has, I think and I hope, sharpened my capacity to envision the real-life story line of others.
I’ll illustrate that, for purposes of this writing, once again in reference to our treatment of Native American Indians. So let me create another personal reality show. I’ll be the “star” in this one. And I will imagine it is a reality show from another time, but a reality show nonetheless.
I am a young woman of Native American Indian descent. (Did you really think I would say 62 year-old?) Along with my mother and father, I have been moved to a totally different part of the country. Our life here is very different from what we’ve known. We didn’t want to leave. My older brother is buried near where we made our home. He was a brave warrior and at first tried to help our nation protect our land. But there were too many of them.
That’s not to say there aren’t some compassionate, sympathetic, and generous white people. There are. One woman, in particular, has shown concern and love for my family. She has taught me to speak the English language and to read and write it as well. Although I very much enjoy reading and writing, it has also been a source of deep sadness, confusion, and more disillusionment. You ask why. I’ll try and explain it. Be patient with me if, in my struggling to do so, it takes a few minutes. But I will start at the beginning and try.
Once I had mastered reading, my friend wanted me to begin to read her religious book, the Bible. She always took me to get-togethers at which she and others celebrate their God. Now I am expected to faithfully read portions of this Bible and to know much of what it says. I have learned that God has a son whose name is Jesus. He is frequently mentioned and held up as the example for the white people to follow while here on earth. I like this Jesus. He eats with people who are not considered important. In fact, He eats with people who are called sinners. They don’t worship God or live right. I like a God that would bother with me. And it would take a special God, because my skin is much darker than any of the whites. And it has a slightly reddish cast. And from what I understand my people are uncivilized; we are definitely not acceptable as we are, even to the white “friends” we have. But it sounds like this Jesus is so special a God that He would consider us passable enough to come and share our evening meal with us.
In addition to this Bible, I have been encouraged to read the documents written by white people when they founded their nation. They are most proud of those documents. They are exceedingly proud of what they call liberty. But when I read their Declaration of Independence, it called our Indian nations savages!! I learned that means lack of kind or compassionate treatment of an adversary or prisoner; abstaining from causing or allowing harm to another. And if being called such a vile and unfair thing were not hurtful enough, we were described as “merciless”. But when my mother pleaded to be able to stay close to where my brother’s spirit resides, they cared not. Nor have they cared that the elderly of our tribe have found it difficult to adjust to a different climate; to different foods; to their entire lives being so different. They have not fared well. It seems to me that the white leaders are not allowing harm; they are causing it.
The first line of this same document declares that they believe ALL men to be created equal, and that they have rights called “unalienable”, meaning they can’t be surrendered or given away. But my people did NOT surrender our rights. They were taken away, as were our lands. This Declaration of Independence really doesn’t say the rights can’t be taken away, I guess.
I barely verbalize to myself yet another thing about this written avowal of their beliefs I find no way of explaining. If we had to be called “merciless” and “savages”, would it not have at least been fair to say that these founding fathers, as they are called, while determining the sort of union/nation to form, were influenced by the Iroquois Indians and their system of government?
I must return to the religious book. There is what they call a passage in this Bible where it speaks of looking intently (I but recently learned this word. I feel sure its usage is correct here.) into a mirror to really see what we are like. That passage warns against looking in the mirror, but afterwards walking away and allowing the reality of what was seen about ourselves to be forgotten. So there is no change in life based on what was seen in the mirror. That causes me to think of another question I dare not ask, except to myself. If the white man really looked into that mirror and wanted to see himself, would he not have to conclude that he has acted as a savage to my people?
God’s Son, this Jesus, acts so differently from what I see among those who constantly speak to us about Him. I have seen Him take nothing away from people. He only gives. He gives friendship and acceptance to those considered unworthy. He gives them freedom to be who they are and enjoys them such as they are without citing a long list of things they must change about their physical way of life. He gives sight to those with none. He restores life to his friend. He takes care of sick people, whether they are Jewish or not. He even washes the feet of His disciples! Yet these, His white followers, do not wash the feet of others. In fact, some have slaves to wash theirs!! And those that do not, are, for the most part, strangely silent. Yet their Declaration of Independence says that when abuses and usurpations are prevalent, designed to reduce a people to absolute despotism, it is not only the right of those people, but their duty to throw off such a government. The white man must not see that right and duty as belonging to anyone of color, neither my people nor the slaves?
This Jesus speaks plainly when telling His followers how to act towards other people. He says not only to love God, His Father, but also to love your neighbor as you love yourself. I wonder if any white woman would feel loved if she were made to leave her home, the home near where her dead son lies? To leave the area in which she has lived since birth? And I wonder if any elderly whites would feel loved if forced to leave their home where they are comfortable and which has special meaning to them? I do not tell my friend, but in the lives of her white leaders I see no evidence of this loving others as you love yourself.
