A theme worth noting.
After what seems like years of [perhaps strategic] avoidance, I finally watched the Expedition of Lewis & Clark PBS special… on netflix…
I could not help but ponder how this troop of heavily armed [they kept stressing how they had the most sophisticated/best weaponry -shooting off cannons to impress the point of their stature, etc.] physically fit, in their prime white males, and their companion large black male slave required the direct intervention of a 16 year old girl. A new mother, who, while caring for her infant child and carrying him upon her back for most of the journey, proceeded to provide these men food, direction, and the required relationships to ensure their safe passage.
A trust that they, or at the very least those who came behind them, betrayed in every instance consistently and without remorse and continue to do so to this day.
And then I thought of the young people out on the streets today. These brave young souls who risk physical assault, uncomfortable conditions, loss of personal privacy and anonymity; all to do their best to guide us, as those before have attempted to guide us, back to the good red road. Back to honesty in dealings and brotherhood and kinship as a way of being.
It is not that any culture has mastered the art of it – certainly indigenous Americans were no exception. But the level of repercussion when tribes of peoples numbering in the thousands battle with non toxic, environmentally non impactful ways of warfare are of massively lower risk and potential devestation than those fought on a new larger, civilized, global scale.
So what is it, exactly, that ‘civilization’ has wrought, or brought, or caused to evolve?
More sophisticated scandals, scams, deceptions and elitism which has generated more greed, corruption, and deleterious consequences for even more masses of people than ever before possible!
Yea for civilization!
Can we go back to the agrarian age?
Thanks.
The generosity and assistance of the indigenous ’savages’ they encounter on their way, and the ultimate fate of those peoples, in particular the story of the Nez Perce Indians encounter are left unaddressed and hauntingly absent.
Instead, PBS tells us that the Nez Perce were considering, nay, on the verge of, murdering the entire expedition team, when an old woman spoke and told them not to because she had been stolen by others and ended up with white people who treated her well.
Let that be a lesson to us all.
Women betray their people.
But that is not the real lesson.
Chief Joseph swore peace with the white man upon that fateful meeting with Lewis and Clark, and for that his people were slaughtered.
That is the lesson of Empire.
Merriweather Lewis committed suicide in 1809.
Clark did not release his slave, who received none of the bonuses or rewards of all the other members of the expedition for another five years.
This is the legacy of empire.
We do not have the right to call ourselves ‘civilized’. We are not.
In fact, it would seem, as a group, we have an increasingly bad habit of wiping those peoples who are truly ‘civilized’ off the face of the earth.
All, in whatever form, in the name of Empire.
