This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York island,
From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters;
This land was made for you and me.
In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,
By the relief office I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
Is this land made for you and me?
-Woody Guthrie
As we approach Independence Day 2024, we perhaps have paused to consider our history as an American nation: its beginnings, its occupation, its governance, and its manifest destiny. Maybe we looked at it with a sense of pride and patriotism.
Unfortunately, many want to take a blinds eye to the theft, atrocities, and genocide perpetrated on Native American peoples. As “woke” citizens grapple with the sins of the past, others want to whitewash our history and pretend that the slavery of African Americans and the robbery of Native Americans was guided by Divine proclamation. Wrong.
In her best selling book entitled An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz writes, “US history, as well as inherited Indigenous trauma, cannot be understood without dealing with the genocide that the United States committed against Indigenous peoples. From the colonial period through the founding of the United States and continuing in the twentieth century, this has entailed torture, terror, sexual abuse, massacres, systematic military occupations, removals of Indigenous peoples from their ancestral territories, and removals of Indigenous children to military-like boarding schools. The absence of even the slightest note of regret or tragedy in the annual celebration of the US independence betrays a deep disconnect in the consciousness of US Americans.”
Our history is primarily and profoundly about land theft, land occupation, and land management. Ownership of private land has been a catalyst for American Capitalism.
the Owens Valley, California
The following is from an article in the NYT dated 6/16/24:
The vast territory known as the Owens Valley [California] was home for centuries to Native Americans who lived along its rivers and creeks fed by snowmelt that cascaded down the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada.
Then came European settlers, and over time, tribe members lost access to nearly all of that land. Eventually, the water was lost, too: In the early 20th century, the developers of Los Angeles famously built a 226-mile-long aqueduct from Owens Lake to the city. It was this project, the story goes, that allowed Los Angeles to become the booming metropolis that it is today.
Less familiar is what happened to the Owens Valley, and the people who lived there, after most of the water was sent south. Owens Lake is now a patchwork of saline pools covered in pink crystals and wetlands studded with gravel mounds designed to catch dust. And today, the four recognized tribes in the area have less than 2,000 acres of reservation land, estimated Teri Red Owl, a local Native American leader.
But things are changing, tribal members say. They have recently reclaimed corners of the valley, buoyed by growing momentum across the country to return land to Indigenous stewardship, also known as the “Land Back” movement.
I applaud the “Land Back” movement. As we celebrate the 4th, let’s remember all of our history, and recognize the similarities between that past and the present day events between Israel and the Palestinians.
CPW
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