William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection wants to know why Elizabeth continues to return to her lie about her parents eloping when that lie has been so thoroughly debunked. Jacobson cannot comprehend how Warren thinks she can have it both ways by admitting she's not a member of any tribe while denying any wrongdoing. Jacobson asserts that Warren reasserts her false claims despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary.
His article is very long. A tiny portion links to the Boston Globe for the full text of Warren's speech. My browsers wouldn't display the page until I turned off javascript. Her speech begins with the name Pocahontas and the myth surrounding the name contrasted with the reality of Pocahontas's historic life. So, she makes very clear to Native American group that she knows the difference between historic fact and myth. While for her own personal story she allows a great deal of myth.
Here's the thing. At that historic juncture the personal histories become blended. There were individuals forced to make serious lifestyle decisions, to go the way of the tribe or to attempt to fit into the conquering culture. The offspring of such individuals caught in this transition will have heard the stories of life gone by. Warren's problem is she took advantage of carveouts intended for tribal members, reservation inhabitants, with fewer or none of the advantages of white culture. Warren is talking to Native Americans and equating her personal struggle with theirs. It will be up to them to accept it or not.
I transcribed the central portion of Warren's speech for you. From memory so I might have some of it a little bit wrong. There is more before and after this. By doing that I realized the importance of storytelling. Warren says so herself. No one can take away from her these stories central to her sense of self. Her stories are real. Her real oral history. Too bad they conflict with documented history. That's not important. The problem of the white world fetish for biased documentation is minor. While her pure family oral history keeps firm.
On the shores of Gitche Gumee
Of the shining Big-Sea-Water
Stood the lovely native woman
A young female of great beauty.
As the flowers of Wetumka
Sat alone among the rocks
Among the stink of rotting fish
Washed up kelp and bat guano
The gorgeous lonely native maiden
tapped her drums and grand piano.
Stood nearby causacian Warren
face pale as the waning moon
Descended through the Jackson years
Progeny to US Calvary goon
Marshaling the Trail of Tears.
His parents were against their union
Her parents really didn’t care
So the couple bolt together
Eschew big wedding, Bypass the altar
Skip religion, hitch in haste,
Fled to marry, took flight to tie.
Got on like two desert hares
Through the hot impassioned night.
Together they survived the Dust Bowl
Together they were Great Depressed
They scrimped and saved to buy a teepee
And watched their three boys grow to warriors.
After Daddy fell of heartbreak
Lost his job and station wagon
Mum put on her finest long dress
Finest dress of finest leather
Deer hide that she cured herself
Sinew-sewn and decorated
Adorned with plastic colored beads.
With Papa down Mum took up work
Walking miles unescorted
Silently and taciturn
Into the nearest Sears and Roebuck
For an entry-level job.
At minimum-wage based on usefulness
Usefulness to corporate heads
No demand for native skills
Threadbare minimum wage and wampum
paid medical debts that no one should have.
Pay for years on end and never ending
By the lowest pay there is
For healthcare that’s a natural right
Like air and water given freely
From the earth and from the sky.
They fought and drank and hung together
Drinking mostly fire water
Fighting mostly about money
In co-dependent intertwining
They stayed together for six decades
Six times ten and three more years
Mama simply passed away
Pass from home to Sears and Roebuck
Pass from this life to another.
Papa passed two years later
I held his hand as cancer took him
As Papa passed he strung together
Words like beads from two dry lips
To my ears.
“Time for me to join your mother.”
They’re gone now but the love they shared
The hardships they endured together
The family they grew, the story they lived
Will always be a part of me
And no one in this universe
Not even a poopy-head Republican
President of United States
Will ever take that part of me.
5 comments:
Wampum, fire water, teepee, Big Sea Water.... To listen to her you'd think she was herded to Oklahoma on the Trail of Tears. What a panderer, but that's what a politician does. Everybody was afraid to take on Obama for fear of being called a racist. Even a lot of Democrats don't think Warren's enough of a Native that they have to be careful what they say about her.
Liars gonna lie.
For those interested, I would like to recommend the great American poet's work Hiawatta Witt No Odder Poems, by Milt Gross, author of Nize Baby. A great writer, illustrator and animator who could only have sprung from American soil. I have loved his work for close to 60 years.
Written in 1926 it starts:
On de shurrs from Geetchy Goony,
Stoot a tipee witt a weegwom,
Frontage feefty fit it mashered,
Hopen fireplaze, izzy payments.
On de muggidge izzy payments,
For one family a weegwom,
In de liss a cluzz "No cheeldren",
Stoot a warning "Hedults honly".
Fiftin meenits from de station
From de station jost a stun's trow,
Fiftin meenits like de bull flies,
In de beck a two car gerredge,
Gave a leff "Ha ha",
De wodder...
And so on - truly a giant among American poets.
You transcribed the whole "Lieawatha"?
She claimed she didn't use her family tree to advance her career. This is a Clintonism. She didn't use her family tree, she used an imaginary one.
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