Ironies of Freedom

Yesterday we enjoyed the festivities of America's 250th in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Downtown Cheyenne hosted an expansive series of events yesterday, one of which was the performance of the Wind River Dancers. This troupe featured dancers from the Arapahoe, Ojibwe, Lakota, and Shoshone tribes. The leader, Lone Bear, of the Northern Arapahoe, did a good job of introducing the background of each dance and some of its significance for tribal culture.

Lone Bear took a moment at the beginning of the program to call for recognition of military veterans in the crowd, of which he himself is one. He expressed appreciation for the service of veterans which has "given us the liberty to come and go as we please." I heard those words, uttered immediately before Lone Bear's introduction of dancers who live on a reservation, and heard a cacophonous irony. It was the US military, during the 19th century especially, which crushed the freedom and bounded the territories of indigenous peoples. It was the federal government whose will is enforced by the US military that established treaties with native tribes only to disregard those treaties to gain more land.

Yes, American military might successfully defends liberty of a certain kind; but it seems to me that so much of what I saw in the Wind River Dancers is a culture choked off by the consumption of expansionist culture inherited from Europe. What to do about that restriction--that clear affront to freedom--is a matter of broader consideration and debate.

But I thought it important to point out that irony, whose presence might cause us to strive at greater length to realize the fact that all people are created with rights to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.

love,

emrys