“Fresh Start” is the first writing prompt for the 2020 #52Ancestors challenge. Now that I’m trying to actually write, this does feel like a challenge! But I think it will be a productive and interesting year.
I hope to use this blog to write about individual ancestors and share some things I have collected and learned about them, but I can only think of one thing when I think of “fresh start”. As a person with North American colonizer roots, everyone I am descended from made a fresh start by coming here from Europe and the British Isles. In so doing, they, as a matter of course, displaced and devastated the people who already lived here, laying waste to their communities and taking their lands. In some cases in my family’s history, this was direct and immediate. Then it was ongoing. I have only recently become aware of the extent to which I am still involved in this today in Canada.
If I have a chance at a fresh start in 2020, it is this: As I learn more about my family history, I will at the same time work to learn more about many things that I am ashamed to be ignorant of. I will not look away from or gloss over the past and what I can find out about my ancestors, if I can help it. So along with #52Ancestors, I have also signed up for the #Next150 challenge.
On the website right now, Senator Murray Sinclair — Mizanay (Mizhana) Gheezhik, meaning “The One Who Speaks of Pictures in the Sky” — of Peguis First Nation, issues the challenge: “My challenge is for you to read the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 94 Calls to Action and to share one of the calls that has significance for you. Whether you’ve read them before or not, take the time to read them now and think about how you can affect change in your own life to make this country stronger.” I will progress to Senator Murray’s challenge, but will start learning more with his call for me personally to change in my mind.
2020 is the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower landing. As one of the estimated 35 million living people descended from that tiny colony, I am hugely grateful to be alive and living in Canada. I am thankful for my gifted genealogy-whiz cousin who made the connection to the Mayflower for us all. I appreciate many of the things that many of Richard and Elizabeth Warren‘s descendants have accomplished — great poetry, famous novels, films, music, some good governance. Some of them have done great good — some fought to end slavery and others have served the poor. I also appreciate that the Pilgrims sought religious freedom in the face of persecution, but deplore that they then felt entitled to harshly visit that same persecution on many, many others.
Literally none of this would be possible without the Wampanoag Nation, who helped the colonizers survive, despite themselves having been almost wiped out by a plague borne by European black rats just before the Mayflower arrived. Despite the fact that one surviving English speaker among the Wampanoag people at the time had been among a group previously kidnapped and enslaved by a British slave trader. This slavery was not an isolated event — today, for example, there are Wampanoag and other Indigenous peoples still living in Bermuda, hundreds of years after their ancestors were relocated by force as slaves. (Some recent stories can be read here.) Their motivations for this at the time are a topic of discussion but it’s impossible not to be humbled that they chose to help the Plymouth colony at all.
According to an article Wamsutta (Frank B.) James’s “Who are the Wampanoag” by Nancy Eldredge — Nauset Wampanoag and Penobscot — there are an estimated four to five thousand Wampanoag people living in New England today. Their language is only now being revived by the Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project after being lost for over 150 years. The numbers speak for themselves.
When I was a baby, the 350th Anniversary of the Mayflower landing was celebrated. For the commemoration in 1970, the invited Wampanoag speaker, Wamsutta (Frank B.) James, was censored, and then uninvited from the observances, for telling the truth about what happened when the Pilgrims arrived. This event helped spark the National Day of Mourning held on American Thanksgiving each year for the past 50 years. The full text of Wamsutta (Frank B.) James’s banned speech can be read online. This year it will be spoken out loud and heard as part of the 400th Anniversary, along with the other commemorations. It is essential to listen. Fifty years have already passed since Wamsutta James was silenced in his call for a new beginning:
“We forfeited our country. Our lands have fallen into the hands of the aggressor. We have allowed the white man to keep us on our knees. What has happened cannot be changed, but today we must work towards a more humane America, a more Indian America, where men and nature once again are important; where the Indian values of honor, truth, and brotherhood prevail.
“You the white man are celebrating an anniversary. We the Wampanoags will help you celebrate in the concept of a beginning. It was the beginning of a new life for the Pilgrims. Now, 350 years later it is a beginning of a new determination for the original American: the American Indian.
“There are some factors concerning the Wampanoags and other Indians across this vast nation. We now have 350 years of experience living amongst the white man. We can now speak his language. We can now think as a white man thinks. We can now compete with him for the top jobs. We’re being heard; we are now being listened to. The important point is that along with these necessities of everyday living, we still have the spirit, we still have the unique culture, we still have the will and, most important of all, the determination to remain as Indians. We are determined, and our presence here this evening is living testimony that this is only the beginning of the American Indian, particularly the Wampanoag, to regain the position in this country that is rightfully ours.”
This is the part of being a Mayflower descendent that I intend to pay attention to this year, and beyond. Happy New Year!
Root and Blade 