DAY OF MEMORIAL

The memorial day celebrations further compound the ideological inconsistencies of American concepts of freedom. The deepest mourning is in the souls of men who survived the wars, and their families who suffered losses of family members to American wars. No matter what person says a mindless cliche in the hope of being in solidarity with our soldiers few have the courage, or insight in many cases to see that the soldiers are mere cannon fodder, and that most of our military conflicts are invasions into and upon other people's land. How we turn our soldiers into heroes is not ours to do, or believe in. It is the soldiers who have the right to make those distinctions in the hell of combat where reality is terror, and decisions to kill, survive and suffer the soul loss from taking life are acted in the war theater. Civilians making pitiful attempts to reach out and say, "Thanks for your service." remain pitiful at best, but are patriotic in the American sense of the word.

American Patriotism is about denial and loyalty to the justification of invasion, and the defense of the country is about quelling the overwhelming and deep sense of being on the wrong side of the great moral issues of invading. This is the dilemma of white Euro-Americans and has been for centuries. American Indians, and Black ex-slaves had and have to wrestle with a host of other contradictions, not the least of which is an inbred sense of needing to get along with whites even at the expense of our own values, at times in history. Scores of Indian nations have been obliterated from existence by the stroke of a pen, the imagination of white Americans landing on Eastern shores, and moving West, on paper. Scores were decimated by disease and bloodletting, and the vengeful spirit of missionaries, and men who married into tribes with the sole purpose of taking land and liberty from people who were once their hosts.  This pattern has not changed. Only denial and ignorance has insisted these things don't matter and do not pertain to the cause waging war on people, not countries. It is too convenient to say country rather than people because major predators, which is what Americans are, do not and cannot afford to see the people.

This the memorial day for me: the death of ideals, being a part of the cultural worldview of rendering people invisible by white Americans, and the deep sense of being invisible as an African Muskogee/Absaroka man. As briefly as I can, Memorial Day is one of mourning because of the inconsistencies of how Americans define freedom as invaders.


- Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 5.26.14