Signs of Change

Can things really change?

Can our country find a way to admit systemic racism and then do the hard work to undue it?

Can we begin to live with our Earth, ending our suicidal quest to dominate it?

Will we begin to honor the Indigenous Peoples of this land, reversing their second-class status in a land that is their own?

Well, I can’t honestly answer all of these questions with a positive answer. At least not with confidence.

But I can see some signs that make me hopeful. I want to share two of those with you.

Example 1: U.S. Forest Service

My family thought about places to get away and enjoy a hike. The outdoors seem to be one place where the pandemic loses its grasp over us. Aside from a piece of fabric covering the face’s mid-section, you almost can forget about words like “6 feet apart” and “Zoom”.

With fatherly skill, I quickly steered the conversation toward Wheeler Peak, my selfish choice for our hike. Our tallest mountain in NM at 13,147 feet, I had wanted to climb this for many years. We looked up the hike and found that, at that moment, the trails in that area were closed. Reading further, they were closed due to traditional ceremonies of the Taos Pueblo.

Carson Forest Supervisor, James Duran stated

“It’s important that the Carson National Forest works to support local traditional communities to continue a traditional way of life that makes the culture of Northern New Mexico so rich and truly unique”. We appreciate the public’s patience and willingness to support our local tribal communities in maintaining long standing connections to these mountains during this unique period.” (link here)

YESSSSS!!!!!!!!

Many of us, myself included, may never have associated public lands and the National Park System as anything beyond an attempt to conserve and preserve the natural beauty of our country. But Indigenous communities have a very different history with the creation of such lands.

Just as land was stolen from these people since the arrival of Europeans, conservation efforts simply provided another avenue to trample over these same communities. As Marcus Colchester writes, “National parks, pioneered in the United States, denied indigenous peoples’ rights, evicted them from their homelands, and provoked long-term social conflict. This model of conservation became central to conservation policy worldwide.”

Making the position of the Carson Forest even more important is the context of Taos Pueblo and the U.S. Forest Service. Just a few miles away from Wheeler Peak is Blue Lake, known to the Taos Pueblo as Ba Whyea, a sacred site to that Tribe used for many traditional ceremonies.

In the name of conservation, the U.S. government appropriated Blue Lake and the surrounding area and placed it under the control of the Forest Service. The Equivalent of The Vatican being taken away from Catholics, Mecca confiscated from Muslims. These thefts usually came without consultation with Indigenous communities. The struggle by Taos Pueblo to regain control of Blue Lake similar to Standing Rock in 2016, represented Indigenous struggles for religious freedom and the protection of sacred sites. (After 64 years of protest, appeal, and lobbying by Taos leaders and their supporters, Blue Lake was restored to the Pueblo in 1970.)

So, to see the Forest Service now working as a protector, not a threat to Taos Pueblo is a victory for all of us. To see words acknowledging that traditional ways are what make our land unique is incredible in a land that has largely ignored and “othered” Indigenous ways at best, often working explicitly to eradicate them completely. (“Kill the Indian, Save the Man” policy of the U.S. Boarding Schools, for example).

Example 2: Princeton University

No, I was not about to take my family on a trip to New Jersey. “Kids, jump in the car. We are heading to audit a weekend course at an Ivy League institution.” Not quite.

But September 2^nd letter by Princeton’s president Christopher Eisgruber to acknowledge systemic racism caught my eye.

“Racism and the damage it does to people of color nevertheless persist at Princeton as in our society, sometimes by conscious intention but more often through unexamined assumptions and stereotypes, ignorance or insensitivity, and the systemic legacy of past decisions and policies.  Race-based inequities in America’s health care, policing, education, and employment systems affect profoundly the lives of our staff, students, and faculty of color.

Racist assumptions from the past also remain embedded in structures of the University itself.  For example, Princeton inherits from earlier generations at least nine departments and programs organized around European languages and culture, but only a single, relatively small program in African studies.”

YESSSSS!!!!!!!!

Coming from an institution that represents power and privilege, this divergence from the default - finding ways to justify unjust systems that serve to benefit that person/group speaking - is refreshing. It is healing. It is needed.

So, back to those initial questions, I can say that I have some hope that I can be a part of making real change happen. That is the only place any of us can start – acknowledging our own responsibility to pave a different road for our own lives, our own words, our own actions. We can be transformed just like the Forest Service and Princeton University to stand for undoing racism and a new way of treating each of Creator’s beautiful creations, land/air/animals included.

Healing awaits us, my brothers and sisters.