Talking to My White Son on Indigenous Peoples Day

I recently read the Laura Ingalls Wilder books for the first time. I loved learning more about Laura, whose life must have closely mirrored the lives of many of my North Dakotan ancestors. I was mesmerized by the descriptions of the preparation of food, of fields, of starting fires in the middle of the longest blizzard imaginable.

But there were some parts of the books the left me reverberating with a nearly audible record scratch. Like the “hilarity” of Pa dressing up with black shoe polish on his face. Or literally any time Laura talks about “Indians”. (I use the term Indian here since that is what she used in the books.)

When I confront these sorts of obvious deviations from what I know to be right, committed by someone who is a good person, the hero of the story, it’s easy for me to do one of three things:

Excuse.

Deny.

Ignore.

“Well, things were different then.”

“I don’t think Ma really thought that.”

“Just keep reading.”

This week we celebrated Indigenous Peoples Day. A day that is also still, in many places, Christopher Columbus Day.

For me, it’s a day of acknowledgement that the land beneath my feet was stolen, that a great wrong was done by people who look a lot like me, whose 23 and Me tests may come back a genetic match for mine.

My son is seven years old, and he goes to a private school that talks about Christopher Columbus much differently than we did when I was growing up. Way less “In 1492, crossing the ocean blue” and way more “killing and pillaging.” In terms appropriate for seven-year-olds. And in both cases, as we sat down to the dinner table on Monday night, and I asked about his day, it was very easy for me to talk about what he learned about Christopher Columbus and Indigenous Peoples, and leave that conversation safely shrouded in the past. As if there was a minor blip a few hundred years back, but its’ been smooth sailing since then.

Basically, it’s really easy to excuse, deny, and ignore what this day means, to Indigenous Peoples and to me, not just in the past, but also in the present.

It’s like in the Laura Ingalls Wilder stories. There’s so much good. Maybe we can just not read the bad bits out loud. Smooth over the rough patches.

But there are rough patches. A lot of them. In her story, and in mine.

And one of those rough patches in my story is that part of what I have, and what my son has, we have because a few hundred years back, someone else took it. Which also means, there are people who today don’t have because we do.

These are simple truths, a matter of a little bit of history and a small amount of math. They’re also really painful truths. And the simplicity makes me no less likely to want to explain, deny, and ignore it away.

But I think there’s a better way. For me and my house.

So I talked to my son about what he had learned at school. He said that a long time ago Christopher Columbus came and he said he discovered America, but really there were people who already lived here.

And I said, “That’s true. There were already people here. And he did some really bad things to take away their homes and their land.” And my son nodded, familiar with this story from the school discussion.

Then I said, “Did you know that part of the reason that we have the land we do, and that our grandparents had the land they did, is because it was stolen from the people who owned it?” His face went wide in concern.

Yes, I think there’s a better way.

I think maybe it starts by pushing into the discomfort that comes from having those difficult conversations, from seeing people being hurt, from knowing, in our hearts, that what we see in front of us is wrong, is unfair, is unjust.

I think it might start by inviting that discomfort into our dinner conversations, to become familiar with the way it’s companions: excuse, deny, and ignore show up, and to thank them for the mirror they offer to be and do better.

I think maybe it starts by telling the stories of Indigenous Peoples to my son, yes, and also telling the ways in which his ancestors participated in those stories. The ways in the ways in which we participate.

That night at the dinner table I didn’t leave my son there, in his concern and discomfort. But neither did I give him easy answers. Mostly because I don’t have them. He came up with some answers, like sharing our house, sharing our toys, building more houses, giving back land. Because so often he is able to see through complexity into simple truth, uninhibited by “possible”, mightily aware of justice.

It turns out that was true for Laura, too. It seems as though she was not too young to understand some of the injustice she was living.

In her book she asks Pa about their lives, what they were doing.

She writes: “But Pa, I thought this was Indian territory. Won’t it make the Indians mad to have to — ”

“No more questions,” Pa said firmly. “Go to sleep.”

I think that we have the choice, again and again. I think we have the voices that call to us, “This isn’t right.” I think we can choose whether or not to hear them. I think we can feel that discomfort as a invitation toward healing, as an opportunity toward change. Or we can choose to turn away, to shut it down, to go to sleep.

I see myself as much in Pa as in Laura. As quick to turn away as to engage. Because it isn’t easy. Because it’s painful. Because it’s costly.

But also, I believe there is a better way. And I want to choose that.