Dreaming the World

Today dawned clear and crisp. We’ve entered that part of spring when the sun seems to rise dramatically earlier each day and the pace of life is rapidly picking up. Yesterday I was down at the marsh and noted that over the past week the first osprey pair has returned and is already on the nest. There were solitary great and small egrets as well. Our ornamental cherry is nearly at full bloom and here near the water a few other threes have come into flower. A couple of miles inland, where spring comes and goes much faster, the trees are splendidly exuberant. Just up the street our neighbour’s farm stand has opened.

Recently, after years of having one car, we decided to get a second. Yesterday, on our way to pick it up from the dealership we came to a patch of road adjacent a small woods. Standing beside the road, looking intently into it, were two young male ducks in full plumage. I stopped to see if they wanted to cross but they did not. We then noticed, with an intense sense of heartbreak, the remains of a larger female in the middle of the road and realized why the ducks looked shocked and confused. (Yes, non-human beings mourn too.)

We discussed moving the mom to the side of the roads so the youngsters could see and touch her but the body was a mess and we had no gloves and no shovel, and there is avian flu. Besides, we did not want to be late to the dealership. We discussed turning back the entire way to pick up the car and arrived at the dealership only to discover the car was not ready. We decided to retrace our route and move the body should it still be there, but when we reached the spot of the tragedy both body and ducks were gone; only a few feathers remained in the road to mark her death.

We have hit a few birds and animals and try to drive slowly enough to stop if we need to, knowing that isn’t always possible. Still, we imagine someone had to be driving well over the speed limit to hit the duck, and are left feeling sad, angry, and concerned for the remaining young ones. It is now our practice to do ceremony for birds and animals we see dead along the road, so this morning we did ceremony for the mom and young ones.

We have just celebrated Passover and today is Good Friday, both commemorations of governmental violence and people’s resistance to it. We’ve been thinking a good deal about these memorial days in the context of the ever increasing suffering we witness here in the US and around the world; sadly, it seems likely that for a while things will only get worse. The government seems determined to destroy as many human and other lives as possible. For the moment their attention is primarily on persons of colour and the environment but that will likely change.

It is instructive to remember that the president is very fond of Andrew Jackson who, in 1835, ignored the Supreme Court and rounded up most Native people living in the southeaster U.S. and force marched them to Oklahoma, a distance of well over a thousand miles. A great many Natives died, as did their white spouses and black slaves; those marches, along with others, became known as the Trails of Tears. (Slavery was a complex, problematic practice among southeastern Natives.) My Choctaw friends still tell stories about the horrors of those marches, remembering them as thought they had happened yesterday.

It is crucial, I believe, that we remember and remind others, that the Nazi’s used the Native American genocide as their model for the extermination of Jews, the handicapped, Gypsies, gays, and anyone who apposed them. At the same time the US government seized the lands, homes, and assets of most Japanese families living on the West Coast, and did not return them. These Japanese Americans were then stripped of their constitutional rights and forced into heavily guarded internment camps. How are we to understand the current hatred and inhumane treatment of immigrants, treatment which seems to fit the definition of “crimes against humanity,” without knowing this violent background? (No wonder the government wants to withdraw from all international agreements governing the treatment of persons!)

As the government continues to try to erase all history that “makes us look bad”, it seems to me crucial for the rest of us to keep the stories of settler colonial violence alive. I wonder what would happen if everyone who cared posted a repressed or erased story on their blog or social media every other week or so. There are so many stories that need to be told, so many groups of people who suffered at the hands of the US government, both here in The States, and elsewhere.

It is indeed ironic that in their effort to make America great again the government has managed to have us branded as too dangerous to visit by many world governments. Perhaps satire could also be a powerful tool for good.

As a writer and artist I feel a calling and obligation to challenge the false narratives being used to justify governmental policies that cause great harm. In the current moment when growing state violence is called “Christian” and “necessary” it is difficult for me to find the right words, the words that might place the distortions and lies in context and identify them as what they are. Still, one must try.