Nice To Meet You, Rainier

When I got home from watching "Jaws" at 1:30 a.m. last Friday night, I had a facebook message from a girl in my program inviting me to go to Mt. Rainier the next day. It took me about 2 seconds to reply in the affirmative, and a few hours of sleep later, she (Mary), her partner (Lindsay) and I were heading down the 5. We basked in fall sunshine the entire two hour drive down there, only to encounter mist, clouds and fog the minute we entered Mount Rainier National Park. We didn't actually see the top of the mountain the entire time that we were on the mountain, but we did see a variety of stunning waterfalls, fluorescent red and orange plants that lit the cliffs on fire, and a dramatically rocky river bed. Lack of memorable vistas aside, it felt so good to be out of the city (even though where I live feels so much less "city" than what I'm used to) and out hiking. Rainier is cool because it's not part of a mountain range - it's just its own isolated mammoth self. It feels like a lonely and personal mountain that you can wrap yourself around. I figured the time that I spent bonding with him and connecting with the nature all around would accelerate the writing process on the paper I had to write that night. And it did ... kind of. On the way home, when we were about 30 minutes outside of Seattle, Lindsay gently aroused me from my car nap to have me look out the back window: there was the glorious top of Rainier projecting out of its cloudy lower half.

Outrage

Everyone knows that Native Americans were forcefully removed from their lands by the US government, but today in a really intense and moving class, I learned some of the horrific details. On the floor of Congress it was said that that the best way to exterminate the savages was through rum. They also employed germ warfare that involved the distribution of blankets contaminated with smallpox. The government promoted the hunting of buffalo as a way to starve the Plains Indians and force them off their land in search of other livelihoods. There are also numerous instances when American soldiers slaughtered unarmed women and children, like at the Massacre of Wounded Knee. Apparently, Hitler took some inspiration from the forced march of the Indian tribes from the deep south to Oklahoma along what is now referred to as the Trail of Tears, implemented as a result of Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal Act of 1830. The natives were forced to march during the winter and thousands died.

Later, the government's policy became more about ethnocide - the elimination of a culture - than genocide. For example, they forced Indian children into boarding schools. Their stated mission was to "kill the Indian, save the man." These schools were run by priests who were exiled by the mainstream church. (The Native community was apparently not surprised at the recent priest scandals.) Some children didn't see their families for 6,7,or 8 years. (Sounds a lot like Chinese Olympic athletes!) There was thus a generation of Indian children who hadn't been parented, who hadn't learned how to parent, who were possibly the victims of abuse, and who had no sense of their cultural identity. These children were being prepared for jobs as servants in well-to-do homes. Like African-Americans, American Indians were also used in experimental medication including practice eye surgeries, sterilization and TB experiments. In 1883, the Indian Religious Crimes Code made it illegal to practice Indian rituals or ceremonies under threat of withholding rations or imprisonment. That was the law until the 1978 American Indian Religious Freedom Act. Can you believe that it was illegal for Native Americans to practice their religion until 1978?! The professor whizzed through her presentation, and we she finished, we all just sat there, stunned. Today, Native Americans have three times the poverty rate of any other minority group, as well as higher rates of infant mortality, alcoholism, diabetes and shorter life expectancies. Such are the effects of cumulative disadvantage.

I had institute immediately following this class and the first scripture we read when I walked in was: "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." (Matt. 25:40)