Thank you Evelyn for sharing this beautiful text!!!
As humbling as this act of reorienting the human race was, I was quite saddened to read this text and I'm not sure how to situate that sadness. Maybe because nature as I understand it is not natural? Maybe because I feel I will never live to hear the land give thanks for the people? Or the blame is as straightforward as my own abuse of nature.
Anyways.
We combat white grievance or white entitlement in America, but combating the human entitlement or human-benefitting agendas is another dialogue.
It challenges the Euro-centric notion of knowledge and reason. The savior moral of converting 'ignorant' 'savage' Natives with Christian values justified the mass genocide. But indigenous knowledge of nature and language is profound and poetic only on a different dimension than the Age of Enlightenment.
This is where the sarcastic 'Thank You' prayer to Trump from Pena's performance connects. Saying thank you's to forces of life that we dismiss as 'natural' BUT also saying thank you's to the unnatural injustices because they provide a catalyst towards productive, ethical, and critical conduct of life.
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