Recognizing and remembering the past
Those who prevent others from learning our history are quite willing to doom our communities to repeating that history.
Hello dear friends -
Juneteenth is now a federal holiday. It reminds us of a great deal, including an era in which communication took time. Years passed after the Emancipation Proclamation (and months after the surrender of Confederate forces) before the announcement of the acknowledgement of the end of legal enslavement of people in Galveston, Texas. Most likely, many folk learned the news much later still. In an age of instant messaging across the globe, that notion of slow-moving news of a massive wave of cultural and political transformation seems both quaint and mysterious.
Recognizing Juneteenth also reminds us of the multiple interwoven threads of the story of the United States: the arrival of refugees from strict English religious laws, the cultures and practices of thriving indigenous nations, new economies dependent on enslaved labor, battles over borders with other colonial powers, multiple pandemics as new viruses arrived with people and animals from across the oceans, attempts to construct a political system different than the European ones left behind, among so many others.
For many folk, the idea of teaching each strand as equally important presents a threat. They want the origin story of their country to be entirely heroic, a one-way road to the exceptionalism of a present-day nation embodying freedom and opportunity. Perhaps that mythology supports their aspirations… or their power.
But for me, the multiple threads make the story so much richer, more fascinating, more difficult, and therefore more human. More importantly, we cannot make good choices about our present and future without a deeper understanding of how our past influences us. Without learning about the southern economies’ dependence on enslaved labor, how can we possibly understand how our national economy and social structures evolved, and how to change them now? Without learning about the decimation of indigenous cultures and nations, how can we possibly understand the legacy of colonization, and how to transform it now?
We are where we are because of the path that brought us here. As every tree in a landscape shows its history in its shape and size, the way it has accommodated wind, floods, droughts, sun, and rain, we show our history in where and how we stand. You cannot help a tree thrive if you do not take its history and conditions into account. Stake it or prune it on the wrong side, and it will topple, break, wither.
“Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.” Many of us are familiar with that quote from George Santayana over 100 years ago. And now, we might add: those who prevent others from learning our history are quite willing to doom our communities to repeating that history, in all its threads, for the sake of upholding a myth.
Sent with gratitude for your company on this journey of connecting past, present, and future.