Reading in Black and Red
This past thanksgiving was a pleasant one. I was able to meet and gather with family, but also because it made me reflect on aspects of this country’s history - specifically the legacies surrounding indigenous Americans. Thanksgiving is a politically contentious holiday with varying meanings depending on the positionally. I, as a Black American did not have ancestors who came ashore at the Plymouth colony. As Malcolm X said, ""Plymouth rock was landed on us” [African Americans]. This distance from the white-settler holiday allowed me to truly grapple with a history that I feel a certain sense of disconnection with, as the holiday pertains to a holocaust of Red and not Black.
Before gathering with my family in the afternoon, I spent my morning checking my social media (like one checks the morning paper). I saw a rise in consciousness and outcry concerning the holiday and its relationship to the commemoration of indigenous genocide. I had come by some books about indigenous Americans that had been sitting idle on my bookshelf, considering my research only allows me to allot time to reading books in my field. I read about the various peoples of the Iroquois nation and about an American-Indian man who condemned the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in a speech. In the speech he talked about how the white-man had destroyed the beauty and sanctity of the American continent in the name of modernity, and how he had brought death to his people.
I felt a deep sense of connection with his hatred of the white-man and the “society” made in his image. My paternal grandmother, who is from Alabama is supposed to have some cherokee lineage put for me, I always assumed it was just stories. But when reading the books talking about the expulsion of the cherokee, to the west and south-west, im sure its a possibility. The cherokee used to own slaves, and freemen and native settlements have had histories of collaboration and kinship formations. It is a history that I want to be more familiar with and is one that I am actively engaging in currently.
