[lbo-talk] Re: Happy Thanksgiving, you dopes

peacenow at theofficenet.com peacenow at theofficenet.com
Mon Nov 28 14:12:49 PST 2005


Quoting lbo-tal
> Holidays are not about what really happened. Holidays
> about constructing national myths and living in the
> today. Thanksgiving in 2005 has about as much to do
> with what actually happened in the 1700s-1800s as
> Christmas has to do with the winter equinox.

I am not at all surprised that lefty people lean white. The prevailing attitudes, reinforced by media, etc, keep Indigenous perpsective almost totally silenced. (Thanks goodness for WBAI, Pacifica, etc., at least) I just have worked with too many Indian people too long to get away with ignoring what they struggle to communicate to this day. Ending genocide is not a passing whim for me, but a way of life. I seek to be of service to those who define their resistance rather than define it for them. I listened for many years and still do to this day.

Just got an email from a Sinixt friend who grew up on the Colville rez, but returned to the land of her ancestors in the Slocan Valley of British Columbia when loggers unearthed Sinixt graves putting the bodies into museums. Several Sinixt from the Colville rez went back to that land, reclaiming it and my friend was instrumental in repatriating the bodies to their rightful graves. She told me she is reading the piece i wrote to boddi on her radio show tonight. She is also addressing the desecration of graves by a peace group in BC when they built their community center. Is this worth ignoring? Why cannot such voices be expressed without condescending attitudes from people who really should have inclusion a little more in action?

Many of us wild mountain people have reclaimed winter solstice as our day of celebration. Equinox happens in the fall and spring, by the way. Fuck Christmas. But hey, we are a bunch of nuts, aren't we? Should we all just give up and let the warmonger consumer culture dictate how we address so called holidays? I am deeply resistant to narco free trade capitalism and teach this to my children. We must reshape healthy culture rather than caving in to what has harmed everything dear.

In peaceful struggle, swaneagle

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