You can excuse Berlins jingoistic calls for a magical superbeing to guide the US but you call Guthries song "mean possesiveness"? I don't get it. What is mean and possessive about the following:
"Was a big high wall there - that tried to stop me A sign atop it - said ‘Private Property’ But on the other side - it didn’t say nothing That side was made for you and me."
What does Wounded Knee have to do with anything? Guthrie isn't saying this land is for white people. Are Native Americans somehow excluded from:
"In the squares of the city - In the shadow of the steeple Near the relief office - I see my people And some are grumblin' and some are wonderin' If this land's still made for you and me."
Guthrie's song "Plane Wreck at Los Gatos" is about the treatment of migrant workers from Mexico. Hardly mean and/or possessive. Listen to Blackfire's (a Dine' trio) version of Guthries unreleased "Corn Song" for his opinion of Native Americans in his own words. He was nowhere near the racist his father was. He was certainly more interested in workers rights and class issues than issues of race but he wasn't totally insensitive to race either. Native American groups play his stuff quite frequently but the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, located in Oklahoma City, refused the Smithsonian’s proposal to launch a Guthrie exhibit there. Woody Guthrie has not been inducted into the museum’s honorees. During the fifteen years at the height of his popularity he was never invited to perform at the Grand Ole Opry. Maybe he wasn't "white" enough for them?
John Thornton