Many of us are getting ready to hit the road, ride the rails and fly the air to visit family and friends for Thanksgiving. It’s a uniquely problematic Holiday for anyone with indigenous roots. I’ll set outside the horror that was the American Genocide of Native Peoples, and point out that at this time of year it’s easy to see the fact that everyone makes up their own reality. We choose what information we pay attention to, what “Histories” we ascribe to, what myths and convenient facts we cling to in order to lead, what is to us, just and worthy lives. No one ever thinks of themselves as a “villain”.
I believe all this to be a form of scratchitti etched over reality by our limited and constrained minds and senses. In case you are not from an urban area, scratchitti is a form of grafitti where you etch and carve your name onto a surface instead of using markers or paint. If you think of “reality”, that thing that exists even when we are not there, as a glass surface, then all of what we believe we know and perceive about the world is mostly scratchitti on it’s surface. I try and look beneath the scratchitti but it is hard. You always get in the way.
Well, Happy Thanksgiving to all, but while you are at the dinner table giving thanks, think about how you (which includes your family and ancestors and all their collective actions) got to be where you are. Then think about how the world can be a better place. And to those brave few – then become the agent of the change you want to see. There’s Ghandi in there somewhere.
Force Of Seeing 