I’ve
been reading two wonderful books that deal with the loss of land, and how that
affects our sense of self, of community and even of nationhood or
“people-hood”. One is Spirit Car
by Diane Wilson, which tells of her journey to understand her Lakota
roots. It was the Minneapolis Reads book in 2012, timed, I suppose, to coincide with
the war of 1862. That war and its causes
are still troubling the land we walk on, in ways we don’t—or won’t—acknowledge. What does it mean that we live on land in
Minnesota that was taken by theft and war from the people who lived here for
centuries? There have been some great
articles and TV shows about this during the past year, but I still think it’s
hard for us to have an honest discussion about what that means, especially to
those who lost. On the rare occasions
that I’ve been in diverse groups where we talk about it, I’ve heard people of
European descent, like me say things like, “I didn’t steal land from anyone”,
or “My family came here long after this.”
True, to be sure, and true for me and my family, but not the whole truth,
It
is also painfully true, that except for a few functionaries killed at the
beginning of the war (who had a big hand in creating the conditions that led to
the war); almost all of the white victims were not the rich and powerful. Rather, they were mostly immigrants who were
working incredibly hard to farm the land and make a living and a life in a
society that was strange to them, and not always welcoming.
The
other book I am reading is We Belong to the Land, by Elias Chacour. He is an Israeli Palestinian Christian priest
and bishop, and you can tell by the combination of the words describing him
that he embodies the terrible conflict in Israel and Palestine. He talks about the pain of having his village
taken from his family in the aftermath of the 1948 war, and how the Israeli
government, and many Israelis, refuse to recognize the rights of Palestinians
to be in the land of their forefathers (and fore-grandmothers and great-great
and so on, back hundreds of years). He
is an Israeli citizen, living in the land of Israel, but not able to get
building permits, for example, for schools that teach everyone—Israeli and
Palestinian, Muslim, Christian, Jew. He has
sought a non-violent way to resist the occupation in a non-violent way and to
work for reconciliation, particularly with enemies.
Both
of the books made me think about my relationship to the land, as the grandchild
of immigrants on my father’s side, and the great-great-great-great grandson (I
think!) on my mother’s side, and a city boy who loves to garden and be in
nature, but a boy who couldn’t wait to get away from his hometown, a town
surrounded by farm country, and sustained, in many ways by agriculture,
specifically meatpacking.
That
was a 71-word sentence, in case you’re counting!
Even
as I age—I’ll be 60 in April—I want more and more to be in direct contact with
the earth on which I walk. I love eating fruits and vegetables that we grow in
our backyard, the backyard now lovingly covered in snow, and crisscrossed by
rabbit and crow tracks, who are helping fertilize next year’s tomatoes, maybe
without knowing it. (37 words!) I love teaching youth in our church and in
the neighborhood school about gardening, and seeing the joy they get from
digging in the dirt, and from eating what they’ve planted and tended to.
And
yet, I feel we are missing something profound, even as we see the peril of
climate change, and make some small steps to address it (which will not be
enough, until we make much bigger ones).
I think there is a body-memory and a land-memory that we have lost, and
we have not done the mourning, both individually and communally, that would enable
us to grow anew.
Thomas
Merton, one of my most favorite poet/priests, writes somewhere (it may be in Conjectures
of a Guilty Bystander) about how much of America’s anxiety and conflict is
due to our lack of conscious acknowledgement and grief about the pain that made
this land what it is. He makes the point
that in our land and in our culture the wounds of slavery and the extermination
of native nations still fester (I would add the treatment of immigrants,
whether they came from Ireland in the mid-19th century, Scandinavia
in the late 19th, or Germany and Russia in the 20th).
(52!)
He
wrote that in the 1960’s, when civil rights were at the forefront. He also
connected this lack of grieving (and repentance, finally) to our war-making in
other lands. I think both are true
today. If we sing “this land is your
land, this land is my land” in our classrooms, then we should know the pain as
well as the joy of what made this land what it is.
I
don’t know about your story, and how you got to where you are. I bet it involves migration in some way. And if it does, it involves pain. My dad’s father, left his Germanic homeland
in the early part of the 20th century, in part to escape
conscription into the army (and we know what the first half of the century
meant for those armies). He was
abandoned by his mother and stepfather, but made it to North Dakota where his
sisters lived, and began farming. No
doubt he longed for the soil and the smell and the taste of his native
land. Maybe he sang “some of the songs”
of his natal Zion. I imagine there were
some long nights of longing as he “settled” into this new land.
Like
many of his generation, he tried to become “American” as soon as possible. He sped up this process when his 5-year old
first born, little Walter, my father, went to kindergarten in 1917, speaking
only German, as was told that he could speak only English, not the language of
the enemy. Rules were enforced
physically in those schools, in those days.
I imagine little Walter walked home slowly with a load of shame on his
back, not because he did something wrong, but because the powers had decided
that he and “his kind” were
wrong.
His
father said that night: “From now on, we speak only English here!” Probably he thought he was protecting his
children, and he was. But he was also cutting off the language of their
infancy, the most important connection to the land where their ancestors
walked. Language develops in a specific
place on the earth, then changes and redevelops as it comes in contact with other
lands, other tongues.
I
wonder how much of that loss was passed onto me and my siblings. I wonder how much that has happened to so
many of us in this land.
Most
of the immigrants who came to the United States voluntarily in the past two
centuries lost their language pretty quickly. (African slaves had it beaten and
starved out of them, and yet still it echoes in our collective music
today). Most of what remains of
Scandinavian-American culture or Irish-American culture are the more quaint and
non-threatening-ones: special foods at holidays, special clothes you wear once
or twice a year, holiday songs. Hardly a
breath of the struggle of the people who came here, their longing for freedom and
justice, their sacrifice.
Maybe
it’s time to arouse that breath. Maybe it’s time to call all of us to give more
than lip service to the belief that we came from the earth and will return to
it, and that we are not separate from the very dirt we walk on. I look out and see trees that were here
before I was, and will be—I hope—after I’m gone. In a few minutes, hundreds and hundreds of
crows will gather in their nightly sunset communion. It makes me sad that one day I won’t be able
to see or hear them. But at least for
this moment, I rejoice that my life is so connected with this beautiful earth.
My
heart is pretty heavy this early evening about the pain of what a divided land
is doing to us and our hope. A family
close to us, whose members were all born in America—some in North American,
some in Latin America—are being kept apart by immigration laws that respect
neither people nor the land. I’m going
to end this with a poem that talks about another family in our community, and
what they suffered. I do so in mourning, but also in hope that speaking this
sorrow will somehow lead to a new way, a new life for us.
Be
justice. Be beauty. Be earth.
Patrick
KEEP MOVING
We belong to the
dust, the dust
belongs to no
one. Ask the bones
of Domingo, who
crossed into Arizona
with his six-year
old son, walking
through the
mountains, avoiding
the desert
snakes and the eyes
burning a hole
through the sky.
On the third
day, they ran
out of water,
and on the fourth
Domingo began to
run out, his skin
tightening, his
eyes wandering
through heaven
and earth, the heaven
you make in your
mind when flesh
begins to die,
skin for skin,
bone to its
bone, the heart’s fierce
surrender. There comes a moment
in time where
the mind can accept
what the body
knows. We belong
to the sun, the
sun belongs to no one.
Domingo placed
his right hand
on his son’s
head, drew a crooked cross,
commanded him
on. The son
obeyed with his
feet. The last order
of the living is
the first wish of the dead:
Keep moving.
