Kenosha: Voices Only Heard Through Their Absence.

there's a book i've been meaning to read
since my 27th birthday i've carried it with me around the world from one desk to another i've started and stopped picked it up and put it down and now it sits still with only a few dozen pages read on my shelf the word surviving genocide glimmers slightly in gold print on the side of the dark purple tome a tome that has spent more time beneath a stack of chinese textbooks than it has on top it is however an important book for me in more ways than one before the police shooting in kenosha i'd never heard the name of the city before although having grown up in michigan it neither sounded exotic nor far away and it wasn't i could identify it as an ojibwe word a remnant of a language i'd always seen scattered around the map of the great lakes my high school offered three foreign languages to choose from spanish french and german one year my elementary school even offered after school japanese classes that i attended but can scarcely remember each of these language led to a country somewhere in the world that i could visit one day it was possible at least in my mind's eye and it gave the study of the language a clear purpose study german go to germany and i did just that there was a high school trip organized so that we could live with the german family practice the language of native speakers and become in some sense more worldly there was an implicit problem in the lesson that we were all supposed to learn in spain people speak spanish in france people speak french in japan people speak japanese but in america people don't speak american we didn't speak any american language we spoke european languages the difficulty of understanding or even pronouncing place names like kenosha remained as the sole reminder of what was there before ojibwe used to be spoken where i grew up yet i had no option to learn ojibwe in school i didn't even know that the language existed arriving at detroit metro airport there isn't a single sign printed in any native language you'll see signs in english and japanese but not ojibwe as a child i understood that japanese was an important language that's the main message that those signs declare although i wouldn't have understood signs written in ojibwe i could have understood this much if they had been there that the language existed that the language mattered and that it had something to do with us i went to germany to practice that language amongst germans imagine if it were possible for a german to come to detroit to learn ojibwe to see and hear it spoken amongst us as a child the only vestiges of the native culture were place names like pontiac saginaw and kalamazoo how is anyone supposed to feel about the lack of connection between these places and their native people language and culture how would i feel if i were of native ancestry myself on the west coast of the lower peninsula i see muskegon saugatuck manistee the name tells us who and what the town signifies and yet it is of course a reminder of something now for the most part absent in the upper peninsula i see munising escanaba kiwina nobody comes to a place like kenosha looking for the culture of the potawatomi's but if they did what could they possibly find to talk about culture in kenosha or pontiac would inevitably mean the culture of either the black or white residents and in 2020 would probably be concerning conflict between the two this absurdity has become so familiar that it's easily overlooked michigan itself is derived from the ojibwe word mishigami meaning big lake i wasn't taught that in school michigan students don't learn where the name of their state comes from or at least it isn't mandatory when i was brought to mackinac island as a child no one told me that mackinac is from the ojibwe mission e macanang at the place of many snapping turtles to me it was just a place to ride a bike eat fudge and take a tour in a horse-drawn carriage checking the mackinaw island website now i find nothing that would inform tourists that the island used to be a tribal gathering place native people held ceremonies and buried their chiefs there they spoke a language and practiced a religion that it seemed nobody had studied that nobody appreciated or understood interspersed with these names of native etymology in michigan are names of european origin most obvious are the french names like detroit marquette and sault ste moraine or english names like birmingham rochester and warren some of the more laughable names are ipsilanti and troy ipsilani was a hero in the greek war of independence from the ottoman empire and troy is of course the name of the storied ancient city in modern day turkey did the people who name these places not find it at all cruel or disrespectful to rename indigenous lands using words from a culture thousands of miles away they named the city of ypsilanti after a war hero who actually did something heroic but the people who colonized north america were no heroes they committed genocide against the native people they enslaved people for more continents than one and they stripped the land of every natural resource they could get their hands on what does this have to do with kenosha wisconsin in the early 1800s over 10 000 potawatomi's lived in communities in wisconsin illinois michigan and indiana despite the fact that most potawatomi's had sided with the united states during the black hawk war in 1832 soon thereafter a u.s commission summoned leaders from the potawatomi communities and coerced them into seeding the last of their land in illinois and wisconsin by 1845 the government had evicted the vast majority of pottawatomies from their homes against their will between 4 000 and 5 000 were moved west of the mississippi while at least 3 000 escaped into canada a small number resettled along the saint joseph river in southern michigan assimilating into european language culture and religion holding out to their new homes with the help of catholic missionaries who in exchange for their souls advocated on their behalf today their descendants the pokegon band of the potawatomi operate the four winds casinos there are now only five native fluent speakers of the potawatomi language to say that their language is endangered would be an understatement the two people in government most responsible for this act of genocide were president andrew jackson and lewis cass former governor of michigan then serving as secretary of war jackson signed the indian removal act in 1830 and cass implemented and oversaw indian removal putting the act into force and so it was almost 200 years ago that kenosha lost its native language and culture the only thing that remains of it now is the city's name jackson cass and most elected officials thought that the native people were an obstacle to their dream of developing the united states into a prosperous nation whose accomplishments would eclipse those of all other countries of the world they refused to see what was actually special about this land was not the foreign invaders what was special about america was the americans themselves meaning in this context the indigenous people the indigenous language the indigenous culture the land wasn't a blank slate for drawing up a duplicate of european culture america had its own culture and the europeans who called themselves american did everything in their power to erase it now most americans live in a nightmare of crumbling highways and abandoned shopping malls and descendants of slaves and slave owners fight over the future of this strange society built atop the graves of once thriving native communities the 1967 detroit riot left 43 dead hundreds injured and more than one thousand buildings destroyed this isn't something new that just came out of nowhere it's the culmination of generations of americans feeling deceived by broken promises of liberty and justice i remember shuffling up the stairs to my fifth grade classroom as lee greenwood's god bless the usa ring through the pa system i remember looking at the flag putting my hand over my heart and reciting the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all many people who grew up saying this pledge feel deceived when they learn about our country's history it's no surprise that they don't believe there is now or ever has been liberty and justice for all are they supposed to gloss over the genocide in slavery to base their sense of nationalism on american soldiers defeating nazi germany in world war ii many people don't feel proud to live in america and to me it's not surprising in the last couple of years i've read solomon northup's 12 years a slave the narrative of the life of frederick douglass andre's resenda is the other slavery and now gradually i'm reading surviving genocide even if it isn't always at the top of my pile of books i'm glad that americans have access to these books and can learn about the country's history on their own however i know the president hasn't read any of these books i know that we're governed by men and women proud to have been educated at princeton and harvard but the education they're so proud of and that marks them out as the elite of law schools and political science programs has nothing to do with these people this history these languages and i know this isn't covered in the required reading of our school districts there are children growing up now whose only connection to the indigenous culture is in their struggle to pronounce and spell the ojibwe names on the map [Music] you