I'm trying, and succeeding generally, to generate enthusiasm in myself for my summer classes. Tonight was Federal Indian Law, which promises to raise some difficult and thought provoking issues around sovereignty, reserved rights and not least, the doctrine of discovery-perhaps the most presumptuous and racist doctrine I have run into to date.
The US view of Indians began with a concept of limited sovereignty that gave the Indians the right to deal with us, but no others, and then over the course of the last 200 years has bettered and worsened according to the prevailing political winds of the time. It's not just the taking of their lands and forcing them onto reservations far from their homelands. At once subjected to forced assimilation, then termination, then self-determination-what will be next? But I suspend judgment for now on all of it. Tonight I'm just tired, and the idea of having to perpetually guard, to perpetually be at risk of losing one's rights based on the current political will of the majority, well that just wearies me to the bone. And I don't quite see how anyone who lives under such a shadow can really focus energy enough on something else to succeed at it. Yet another new perspective, for which I am grateful anyway.
No comments:
Post a Comment