A fundamental blindspot in U.S. society revolves around the question: Where did all this land we call the United States come from? European settlers began colonizing—read invading—North America in the early 17th century. This process of settler colonialism was and is based on a denial of the humanity of the Original Free Nations, Peoples and Communities that existed and developed their own multitudinous cultures and societal interrelations for millennia prior to the arrival of white people from across the Atlantic.
In “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native.” Australian anthropologist and ethnographer Patrick Wolfe wrote “settler colonizers come to stay: invasion is a structure not an event…. Indigenous North Americans were not killed, driven away, romanticized, assimilated, fenced in, bred White, and otherwise eliminated as the original owners of the land but as Indians.” (p.388)
The ongoing legacy of denial of how what is today called the United States came to be and how that has played out over 400-plus years into the 21st century postpones Life -nurturing and -respecting timelines from manifesting. Extraordinary possibilities exist for life after empire, provided we as the inheritors of the Empire Domination Model of Christianity are willing to redeem the consequences of the past evermore becoming present. Genocide, dispossession, colonization, forms the core of U.S. history, the very source of the country’s existence. Will it be the future as well? The choice is ours.
An analysis of the steadfast denial of the actual foundations and development of U.S. society and culture is explored here with regard to the catastrophic, accelerating changes to Earth’s climate reaching critical mass in recent decades. The way forward requires reestablishing adherence to the Great Law, of reawakening to the spiritual reality of Earth, of Life itself, and conducting ceremonies of Thanksgiving throughout the seasons for the Life-giving energies Mother Earth bestows upon all of Creation.
