GIVING THANKS, December 1, Dear Deb

This week I have reflected on Thanksgiving.  First it was Veteran’s Day and my thanksgiving led me to thoughts of Jim Northrup, Anishinaabeg, Marine, Vietnam Veteran and chronicler extraordinaire.  My thoughts of thanksgiving embraced my friend and poet and playwright Miriam Rothstein who portrays the ongoing injustice in land rights for the indigenous people of a tribal island in British Columbia.  My thoughts and thanks took me to Louise Erdrich’s THE ROUNDHOUSE where land rights laws dictate small protection against crimes committed on native reservation residents.   Thanksgiving.  The very word brings to mind elementary school coloring book pages depicting pilgrims in their tall black hats, Indians in their feathers all gathered together to share a meal.  Today I am thankful for an awareness of a world of many nations, many cultures, and disparate thoughts, belief systems coming together as one human community.  I was captured by Mike Hazard’s posting on Facebook this morning.  Many of you know Mike.  He is a poet and photographer who witnesses life around him and gives voice and image to all he sees.  Today his image was the word F.O.R.T. on a tear-stained plaque.  His accompanying words follow:

“MANIPI HENA OWASIN WICUNKIKSUYAPI/WE REMEMBER ALL THOSE WHO WALKED
Fort is a four letter word.

We were gathered near Fort Snelling to remember Minnesota’s Trail of Tears.

A reporter asked why I was there and I cried my eyes out as I tried to count the reasons why. Why, 150 years after 1,700 Dakota were force-marched into a concentration camp at Fort Snelling, was I here?

I was here because I have learned our world is mapped by trails of tears.

I was here because life is way more fulfilling now that I have become more curious about cultures other than my own. Right now I am teaching 25 students at LEAP High School how to make picture stories about their lives. They are recent immigrants from all over the earth. Genocide drove them from their homes in Burma, Ethiopia, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, El Salvador. Their stories open, rend your heart.

I was here because I have learned that my great grandfather was an Irish lumberjack in the North Woods and I realize now that meant he was cutting down the trees to build houses for European immigrants. In the words of the late Walt Bresette, the clear cut of the forest canopy was an eco-holocaust for the Anishinaabeg.

I was here because in 1964 I stood in the Doorway of No Return on Goree off the coast of Dakar, Senegal with an African kid about my age. He spoke no English and I no French, but somehow we communed with the unspeakable horror that was the slave trade between Africa and America.

I was here to listen.

I was here to witness the prayer walk called "Manipi Hena Owasin Wicunkiksuyapi/We Remember All Those Who Walked.” http://2012dakotamarch.eventbrite.com/

I knew I was on the right trail when I spotted Sister Jane McDonald bringing up the rear of the procession. “Tears are holy water,” the good Sister teaches.

I was here because I wanted to understand what happened, here.

I was here because fort is a four letter word.

When we saw an eagle circling a circle of circles over the ceremony, as an elder held a round red wreath to the sky, and trilled, I thrilled, knowing why we are here.”