In "American Progress" by John Gast, Native peoples are depicted as being driven away by settlers. Image: U.S. Library of Congress

Opinion

Elizabeth Cook-Lynn: I'm tired of the White American history of Manifest Destiny

Monday, April 29, 2019

A new narrative????

By Professor Elizabeth Cook-Lynn

Native Sun News Today Columnist

nativesunnews.today

Perhaps at the beginning of the XXI century, especially for the young people who are not so much identified with the old story, we need a new narrative.

Would that be a way to renew the values that stem from the past or would that simply allow us to see the past fade without a trace with no blueprint for the future? What would replace our accumulated knowledge or should that knowledge even be considered useful these days? All sorts of events and troubles seem to intrude, as we mull over these questions.

What principles can guide us now that we are in the midst of a dreadful storm, having elected a 70 year old, self-centered white supremacist to a term which seems to be turning into a crisis of major proportions?

Elizabeth Cook-Lynn. Courtesy photo

My steadfast position is that even when so-called winners and losers can’t agree on the story, it is not productive to politicize the historical events we share and start writing vicious laws of punishment to those who have survived the crimes of empire.

I am certain that those of us who are aging have to move on, that to continue our narrative as we know it may not help the coming generations. I’m tired of the White American history of Manifest Destiny (how the west was won), and just as tired of the American Indian history of Great Plains stories (how the west was stolen).

But, taking a look at the core Dakotapi values of how to live on this earth without destroying, we know that new narratives must be connected to old ones about creation and origin.

It is not that legacies should be seen as necessarily true or false to believers and non-believers alike, but to move into a decent future that benefits all of us, we have to come to grips with the callous flow of White America’s core values arising from those realities. Those core values can be stated in this way: GROWTH THROUGH TERRITORIAL CONQUEST.

That is the irony of what is often called the “American Way,” nested conveniently in Occupation and Imposition.

Becoming a modern democracy requires the bravery to face the fact such core values amount to a creating a white-man’s world governed in the criminal behavior of greedy real estate criminals along with the excuses of self-centered right-wing Jesus societies.

The destruction of the Earth is what is at stake.