"TODAY IS INDIGENOUS PEOPLES DAY"

 “TODAY IS INDIGENOUS PEOPLES DAY”

When I was growing up on the Arkansas side of the Mississippi River Delta, I inhaled the racism that flowed through the physical and psychological air there.  That racism was one of the reasons that I always felt weird about Columbus Day.  Although Americans of Italian heritage had made it into the classification of “white” by my time, that classification had not quite made it down to Helena, Arkansas.  Those of us who were “truly white” (whatever that means) were sure that people of Italian heritage were somewhere in the middle between the exalted category of “white” and the degraded category of Black (most often described by the N-word).

The celebration of Columbus Day was strange to me as a boy – our segregated school system did not recognize many days as national holidays, and Columbus Day was one of the unrecognized ones.  I have since later learned that my feeling of weirdness about Columbus Day was correct – I was just feeling it for the wrong reasons.  As I learned more about American history, it turns out that Columbus Day was a main focus of the savaging of the land and the indigenous peoples of the land by those classified as “white.”  Now it is called “Indigenous Peoples Day,” as it should be.  Though Columbus did not “discover” America, his landing in a place that he thought was India would become the opening for huge exploitation of the native peoples and the land.  

    Caroline and I had our first pastorate in Norfolk, Virginia, and there we learned that American history actually began before the Civil War.  We visited Jamestown several times , and there I learned about the hospitality of the coalition of native tribes led by Chief Powhatan.  While not all native tribes welcomed the immigrants known as “whites,” many of them did.  Or at least they did until it became clear that those classified as “white” intended to do them harm and to take their land and resources.  Chief Powhatan noted this shift in his speech to Captain John Smith in 1609:

“Why should you take by force from us that which you can have by love?  

Why should you destroy us who have provided you with food?  What can

you get by war? And then you must consequently famish by wrongdoing

your friends…….I therefore exhort you to peaceable councils, and above all

I insist that the guns and swords, the cause of all our jealousy and uneasiness,

be removed and sent away.”  

I am grateful to John Peacock and Ed Loring of Baltimore for calling my attention to this speech, and our hope is to print the full version in Hospitality Magazine early in 2022.  Chief Powhatan’s speech is part of a long litany of laments and anguish and anger directed at the rapacious appetites of those classified as “white.”  This approach to “non-white” peoples on the land continued for centuries.  Indeed, in a speech almost 250 years after Powhatan’s speech, Chief Seattle gave a similar one to the “white” governor of Washington in  1854:

            “Even the white man, whose God walked and talked with him, as friend to friend, is not exempt

 from the common destiny. We may be {brothers} after all. We shall see.    We will ponder your

 proposition, and when we have decided we will tell you. But should we accept it, I here and now make

 this the first condition: That we will not be denied the privilege, without molestation, of visiting at will

 the graves of our ancestors and friends. Every part of this country is sacred to my people. Every hill-side,

 every valley, every plain and grove has been hallowed by some fond memory or some sad experience of

 my tribe.”

In Chief Seattle’s response, we should note one of the great gifts of Indigenous people to all of us:  his sense that the land belongs to God, that we all are siblings, and especially that there is special connection between the earth and humanity.  As we swelter with global warming, as we worry about the rising sea levels, as we see the dramatic climate change brought on by the human greed noted by Chief Powhatan, let us remember that there is a different way of approaching life, a different way of approaching one another.  

On this Indigenous Peoples Day, let us remember the horrific suffering brought by those of European heritage, but even more strongly let us remember this gift that is still available to us from current Indigenous People, from current Native Americans – a vision of life that sees all of life as part of the same web.  Let us live by the love noted by Chief Powhatan and the connectedness lifted up by Chief Seattle.  It is a calling and a struggle that offers us life.  It is a struggle which we cannot avoid on Indigenous Peoples Day. Yet, it is the way to life.