This morning my husband Phil showed me an email/Facebook message he’d gotten from Kevin Isgor-Locke. Kevin is an American Indian Baha’i from South Dakota. If you are wanting to know about him, the web has lots of links for you to explore on your own.
This is what Kevin posted.
"King wrote in his 1963 book “Why We Can’t Wait” which outlined the historic injustices inflicted on Native People: “Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race. Even before there were large numbers of negroes on our shores, the scar of racial hatred had already disfigured colonial society. From the sixteenth century forward, blood flowed in battles of racial supremacy. We are perhaps the only nation which tried as a matter of national policy to wipe out its Indigenous population. Moreover, we elevated that tragic experience into a noble crusade. Indeed, even today we have not permitted ourselves to reject or feel remorse for this shameful episode. Our literature, our films, our drama, our folklore all exalt it.”
You will find this same quote in the autobiography Marlon Brando wrote before he died in 2004.
On March 15, 1972 I attended The Godfather Premiere in Marlon Brando’s place. It’s well known he refused the Oscar in March of 1973, having Sacheen Littlefeather refuse this award in his place.
Marlin Luther King Jr. got it. Marlon got it! I get it! Why is it so hard for our nation to get it?!
The True Original Sin that our nation is built upon is what we did in order to get the very Land we’ve America upon and with.
My closest confidant was Doris Rucks. The contrast between her dark brown skin and my light tan skin was evident. But what you couldn’t see was our unity of knowing. Knowing that our nation was built on these twin pillars. We need both, in order to go forward in seeking solutions.
So on this day of remembrance, let us ponder why this is so seldom brought up.
Pink Eagle (Annie Olson)
January 18, 2021
