Modern Flagellants

 Back in the 13th century, certain devout/mentally ill Christians began to whip themselves into bloody messes in order to demonstrate their piety. Sometimes, pain can facilitate hallucinations, and this is true whether you're a medieval monk or a Native American Sun Dancer. 

David Frum gave a talk in Canada about the odd framing of "settler-colonialism." On the one hand, it's a description of the way in which Europeans took over the Americas. On the other, it's a moral condemnation. The issue with the condemnation is that it focuses moral outrage on Europeans from centuries ago, delegitimizing their institutions and does nothing to help current Native populations. 

It is absolutely true that the default position of the British and successor governments was often the ethnic cleansing of Native Americans. There were exceptions, such as the Proclamation Line of 1763 - which was itself a cause of the American Revolution. It's a long history that generally unfolded the following way: land hungry Whites wanted cheap land; the government obliged them by forcing Natives west and then onto reservations; sometimes White reformers got traction, even if their reforms were often terrible (the Dawes Severalty Act, for instance).

What's odd is the idea that one group of people defeating and expelling or subjugating another people is somehow unique to White Europeans. Like, that's the entire history of the human race. One group expands until it needs more room or resources and then goes to war to expand or die trying. This was true of Natives, too, before Europeans arrived. 

When Cortez marched on Tenochtitlan, he did so with tens of thousands of Native allies who had been brutally subjugated by the Aztecs - themselves a pretty brutal people. The British colony of Jamestown was settled in the midst of a consolidated and expanding political confederacy that had pushed Iroquoian speakers westwards. The paramount chief, Powhatan, saw the English as potential allies and a source of metal weapons and trade in his fight against his Native enemies. Every conflict between Whites and Natives was also a fight between Natives and Natives.

The proper context of the extraordinary crimes that Whites perpetrated against Natives is the entirety of human history.

This isn't intended to excuse those crimes. Contemporary critics were able to look at what Whites were doing and condemn it. The current intellectual (or perhaps more accurately "academic") climate is that Whites are uniquely brutal and savage. This was intended as a corrective to earlier narratives where typically when Natives won a battle it was called a massacre, whereas if Whites wiped out a village of Cheyenne, it's a battle. The thing is, we now call Sand Creek a massacre, not a battle. We are correcting that record.

The problem with things such as "land acknowledgements" is that they come absent with any tangible action. As someone said, acknowledging that your town council meeting is taking place on "stolen Narragansett land" without a plan to give it back is basically taunting.

In the end, you have a modern day equivalent of flagellant. They aren't scourging their flesh, but rather they are trying to heap upon themselves the moral opprobrium due their ancestors. Or perhaps by flagellating themselves sufficiently, they purge themselves of crimes they themselves did not commit. "Look how good I am. I'm not like those other white people."

The reality is that you are not like those other Whites, because the cultural context has changed. The ability of a small-L liberal democracy to change has led us to a reckoning with the fact that our ancestors did bad things. Those bad things - brutal, bloody things - are not our fault. Heaping the sins of the fathers upon the sons is morally wrong, too. It's an act of psychological self-harm akin to whipping your back with a leather whip imbedded with barbs. Your god has changed, but the action is still the same.

History can inform the present. It's not, however, a perfect guide. Things change. If we want to help Native populations, empty verbal flagellation is not the way. Its main purpose is to make those who know the proper shibboleths feel pure, like the monk with blood running down his back who smiled up at God, as if to say, "See how pious I am!"