Well, Darn
Darning socks starts with a single thread around the edges. It's a metaphor and it consistently comes to mind for me for filling in any big holes, such as educating a child about a new topic.
Wally Brown is doing something akin to what I hoped to do originally with this site. I wanted to curate Native culture and its influence on the larger world.
I'm a former military wife. I've crossed the US repeatedly and lived in various places.
Local place names and local culture always contain influences from local Native peoples, yet most Americans seem oblivious to the fact that the diversity of the "American melting pot" isn't just because of immigrants from elsewhere.
It's also because of the hundreds of culturally distinct Native tribes who welcomed tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free, fed them and helped them survive in an alien landscape and then were stabbed in the back by the people they gave aid and comfort.
Because of taking an interest in Native culture following the death of my father, I learned last July 4th of The Haudenosaunee Confederation.
The American Experiment represents the United States’ deliberate effort to establish a new form of government and society, founded upon ideals of self-governance. This endeavor was unprecedented, marking a significant departure from traditional monarchical or aristocratic rule. It was an experimental venture, testing whether a people could truly govern themselves.
Most likely, the Founding Fathers of the United States of America were not radical geniuses inventing something new whole cloth because they were so amazing.
Most likely, they STOLE thos idea from The Haudenosaunee Confederation.
In my firsthand experience, stolen ideas consistently get botched because the thieves don't really understand what they have been told "in a nutshell" and are fundamentally lazy and over entitled and not wanting to work that hard. If they had a work ethic or other ethics, they wouldn't be stealing ideas to begin with.
This is a still living Confederation and still on these lands. Just because you haven't heard about it doesn't mean it died.
I'm absolutely not interested in promoting bloody revolution. I wanted to curate information about my father's culture and the culture of other men I knew and loved who helped heal damage done to me by "rape culture" AKA "the patriarchy."
AKA White culture.
I wanted to share that culture because I found something life giving in it which I cherished and respected and felt enormously grateful for.
But 99 percent of what we hear is:
1. Natives are victims.
2. You stole our lands.
3. We are dirt poor because of you racist, abusive white devils.
And if someone thinks they did something cool, most often we hear cries of cultural appropriation.
I'm not saying those aren't valid complaints. I'm saying it's not how you rebuild your world.
I wanted to give Native culture a little of the love it gave me and that was not allowed, no. And it's impossible to give that culture any love when the members of it share nothing but pain with outsiders and hatred and rejection if you look too White.
Perhaps Mr. Brown can do a little of what I could not.
And perhaps in another 400 years someone will do something about giving America the democracy the Haudenosaunee dreamed up.
Because I can guarantee you letting the country be run by an incompetent and hateful billionaire who stole the election has nothing to do with whatever it is they were doing that some White European assholes thought was so COOL it was worth STEALING and taking credit for.
I spent much of my life buying this BULLSHIT that our founding fathers were an incredible group of unique geniuses. That seems implausible as a natural occurrence but I believe in reincarnation and blah blah blah and figured it must have been somehow planned by spiritual forces and rest assured Christian colonizers sure as hell want you to believe that God decided White assholes would steal these lands and create a great country.
It's called Manifest Destiny, the belief that the USA had a Destiny to unite the continent AKA a RIGHT to take these lands from the peoples occupying them.
If there WAS and still IS a Haudenosaunee Confederation, then these weren't primitive, disorganized little tribes.
I don't know how to fix this mess. You can thank Wil Russoul and Aberdeen, Washington whom I wish would get washed out to sea and eaten by sharks in a modern day reenactment of Sodom and Gomorrah for my ability to recognize that this was a stolen idea and therefore obviously on the face of it botched by incompetent fools incapable of understanding it.
And maybe the best and brightest of these peoples can focus on educating the world about how it should be done instead of whining and crying and hating on people they should see as allies if they bothered to look up the actual definition, which, no, isn't synonymous with your bitch.