audacity

Audacity. This is one word that can be used when describing the basic mold of the United States of America. It means the quality or state of being audacious and having intrepid boldness. Someone who exhibits audacity is said to have a bold or arrogant disregard of normal restraints . This definition, according to Merriam-Webster.

 

I think it was audacious to come to this land in 1620 and look around and decide that it was okay to just start living here. I know the Native indigenous people welcomed the pilgrims on the Mayflower, but they overstayed their welcome and were audacious. They boldly and arrogantly tried to tell the original inhabitants of what we now call the United States that the way they were living was wrong and that they would help them become ‘civilized’. The pilgrims brought their organized religion right along with syphilis and other diseases. The civilization they saw as lacking in the Indian community was there, but not to the acceptance of the pilgrims. They sought to change it. They assessed that surely a race of people could not be happy living like they were.

 

This theme has been hammered out by many countries in the world, but not knowing or having studied the entire history of the world, I can’t tell you who did what and where. There was the Inquisition-Catholics killing anyone that did not accept their faith. There were the Crusades- another attempt at making pagans toe the line in matters of religion, economics and lifestyle. But no one seems to have been more audacious than the USA, and the attitude follows through to everyday Americans in everyday situations throughout this country. It is spread throughout the world by Americans. It is spread throughout a community. It is spread in individual homes. This bold arrogant way of telling people how they must live. Forcing down their throats what we think best for them.

 

I realize that other countries do this as well. Americans aren’t the only ones. But this article is about the doings of the people we’ll call Americans- specifically, the United States of America Americans. In the history surrounding the pre revolution of 1776, the French and British both wanted to take the land from the Native people who lived there. The British King had decreed that all the land West of the Allegheny River was to be for Indians so that meant that the land East of the Allegheny River was taken from them. The British fought the French because France wanted the land to hold on to established trade routes. Indians fought along side both the British and the French, but fought for their own interests. The Indians lost and the French lost and the British won. That meant the land was now in the hands of the British. Soon, the Colonists would demand and fight for and win their independence from Britain and the United States was born.

 

But they had established their will upon a people. They brought their colonial ways of what they deemed as civilization and forced it into the people of the land. They did to another people what they fought so gallantly to seek for themselves. Freedom.

 

This same scene perpetuated to the Dakota territory when Chiefs Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull were defeated and their land taken. The Indian people were put into schools. Their language was taken. Their way of life, hunting and ceremony was taken. It wasn’t until 1978 in the United States of America that a Native American ceremony was allowed to take place openly. This went on in the far West when Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce was sent to exile, winding through the mountainous regions of what is now Montana to escape being rounded up and force fed civilization. In fact, this quote from Crazy Horse is filed with a basic democratic value, yet the Indian people were forced to change their lifestyle because the Americans thought it to be good for them:

 

“We did not ask you white men to come here. The Great Spirit gave us this country as a home. You had yours. We did not interfere with you. The Great Spirit gave us plenty of land to live on, and buffalo, deer, antelope and other game. But you have come here; you are taking my land from me; you are killing off our game, so it is hard for us to live. Now, you tell us to work for a living, but the Great Spirit did not make us to work, but to live by hunting. You white men can work if you want to. We do not interfere with you, and again you say, why do you not become civilised? We do not want your civilisation! We would live as our fathers did, and their fathers before them.”

 

“We do not want your civilization.” Strong words. Crazy Horse said he didn’t want to work. But we all know what he meant. He didn’t want to have a job where other people get rich off his sweat. It was work enough to hunt and gather. It was a hard job to teach as an elder or take care of a community. It was work, but not a job for wages, to make your shelter, make your tools and care for the poor and sick. Now, in modern day times, this audacity still prevails. We still go and force our will on others. We go to foreign places and tell them how they must live. If they don’t adhere to the changes and revert to an economic model that is profitable to Americans, we remove their leaders from office and insert our own chosen ones that will be more sympathetic to our cause. If that doesn’t work, we’ll bomb them into submission. Force them to accept our democracy and civilization.

 

We force a way of life on to our own people right here. A faction of people don’t want other people to be free to do things that they don’t want them to do, but have no business regulating. Like being gay, like seeking information about sex education or having an abortion, like being poor. You know, being poor isn’t so bad. In the lyrics from a song called ‘Me and Bobby McGee’ made popular by Janis Joplin, she sang “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose”. There are people who choose their way of life, complete with family and community, over having monetary wealth and all that it holds.

 

One day a few years back, I was traveling through the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. One of the poorest- money wise- places in the United States. I went to the grave site for the mass grave of the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890. You drive North on a road from South Dakota Highway 44 into Wounded Knee. Along the road when you get near the cemetery, you will see small shacks where people sell trinkets like dream catchers and hand made jewelry. After I went to the cemetery to lay down my tobacco to honor the spirits of those in that mass grave, I stopped to look at some of the craft work being sold. I was talking to a man that made dream catchers. We got to talking about life out here in Pine Ridge. I asked him what he thought would be the best thing that could happen that would improve his life and the lives of the people of the area. He responded, “If they built a Wal-mart closer than Chadron so we could get our craft materials.” He was satisfied living with little money. He wanted the convenience to buy the things he needed to make his living to be closer at hand instead of having to travel the 45 miles to Chadron, Nebraska to accomplish this task.

 

Who are we to go to any place and tell the people what they need to be happy? I live on a small piece of land that I rent. It has a three room cabin and a wood burning stove. I use an outhouse for human waste. I carry bottles of water from a nearby artesian well for drinking and cooking.

I’ve been told by people who perceive my lifestyle to be backward and uncivilized that it is “too bad” that I live this way. These things said to me by members of my own family. An acquaintance of mine is in Central America working on a Human Rights Fellowship program. The people don’t know what is happening when these strangers come to their community. They have lived under dictators and are not sure they want change. In the past, change meant an end to peace. They resist and the program directors don’t know why they wouldn’t want this civilization they are bringing to them. There are many great humanitarian efforts going on to bring medicine, food and clean water to people who are thick within a community with sickness and starvation. This is good, to offer and give the basic things needed for survival, but to go and put forth what is called ‘civilization’ to a people without their input of how and why and to let them identify their own recipients is nothing short of audacious, bold and arrogant, behavior.

 

When you add greed to the equation, it really gets sick. The Nestle’ Corporation gave away baby formula to Central American mothers of infants. They told them that the formula was better than the mother’s breast milk. When their breasts dried up is when the formula stopped being given away free. Now it was sold. No one had the money to buy it and if they did, there was not fresh clean water to mix it. No wonder the infant mortality rate was up. Corporate interests drive the civilization and democracy we thrust upon people here in our own land and abroad. We even kill for it as it happens in Iraq. We put in the leaders that administrate our self serving agenda in the hopes that our corporations get a foothold and make more money for stock holders. I realize there are well meaning people that want to help those less fortunate, especially in the procurement of fresh clean water, sanitary conditions and the fighting of disease. I admire and honor the hearts of these people. But I ask that they respect the only real human right, freedom. And with freedom comes two of the most honorable traits of all human self worth- dignity and respect.

tags: manifest destiny, freedoms, human rights

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