Indian perspective on Thanksgiving
As an Indian, the real and true American, I ask our white brothers a very serious question about this day. How can I celebrate this day? The act of expressing and giving thanks is what our people shared with the Pilgrims upon their arrival to our homeland.
And then, in time, we were repaid with the theft of our homeland through genocide.
Here are some things Indians should be thankful for. Our losses and our blessings. Loss of our homeland “Oskigineeweekog,” which is now known as America. Loss of more than 90 percent of our people through genocide. Loss of our freedom through our incarceration on those white man-created reservations/internment camps. Loss of our spirituality. Loss of our language. Loss of our culture and heritage. Loss of our dignity. Loss of our pride. Loss of our self-respect. Loss of our identity as Indian people. Loss of our traditional healing methods and medicines. Loss of our right to teach our children about being Indian and about being human even after the forced white man’s education at their Indian “boarding schools.”
We give thanks that we are still here. We give thanks that within our collective DNA we carry the great wisdom, resilience and determination, as well as the tremendous will to live of our ancestors. Those very same characteristics kept our people, our nation, strong, united and always looking out for the interests and well-being of The Ancestors, The People and The Seventh Generation.
In the words of a very wise elder: “We must love one another or die.”
Dan Ennis
Traditional Medicine Elder of the Wulustukyieg
Caribou
LePage does not speak for me
Some of the very first undocumented immigrants, the Mayflower Pilgrims, arrived on our shores nearly 400 years ago. That nearly half of them survived that first year was largely because of the help and hospitality of the “locals.”
In this festive season of gratitude, my family and I remember the powerful words of Emma Lazarus’ poem fixed to the base of the Statue of Liberty. It reads, in part: “And her name/Mother of exiles. From her beacon-hand/Glows world-wide welcome; … cries she/With silent lips. Give me your tired, your poor,/our teeming masses yearning to breathe free./ … Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me./I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”
I cannot hear the phrase “homeless, tempest-tost” without seeing in my mind that recent picture many recall of the tiny child refugee washed up on a beach. The governor does not speak for me and my family when he wants to deny Syrian refugees a home in our state.
Patricia Ryan
Mount Desert
Maine’s commitment to the blind
In the Oct. 13 Bangor Daily News article about Maine’s $400,000 shortfall in services for the blind and visually impaired, the representative for the Maine Department of Labor stopped short of guaranteeing the future of services for the state’s blind community, citing budget concerns as the rationale for potentially eliminating the Division for the Blind and Visually Impaired. But it is what officials are not saying that concerns us most.
While 70 percent of blind Mainers remain unemployed, the state’s response is to shortchange the blind community and then place the person in charge of programs for the blind on administrative leave for “cost overruns in service delivery.”
Let’s actually spend funds on their intended purposes. I believe this has been the practice of the Division for the Blind and Visually Impaired under John McMahon. Yet, with a straight face, officials tell us that Maine is simply unable to find one qualified person to run programs for the blind, and they instead trot out the director of the Bureau of Rehabilitation Services, who has no experience in the blindness field. In light of these actions, blind Mainers cannot help but question the state’s commitment to us and to the highly specialized services that we need.
Leon Proctor Jr.
President
Maine Chapter of National Federation of the Blind
Lewiston
Delegation wrong about park
Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King and Rep. Bruce Poliquin’s recent letter to President Barack Obama regarding a national monument in the Katahdin region makes no sense. They ask for help for the region’s beleaguered economy using taxpayer funds, but they ignore the opportunity before us — a public-private partnership in our region’s economy. They must know that the preferred national park and national recreation area designation will have a greater positive effect on the economy of the region.
It appears, however, that they are passing the proverbial buck. They do their districts and constituents a disservice when they ask for economic relief but ignore the possibility of introducing enabling park legislation themselves. The region needs this infusion of private capital to produce long-term benefits.
It is not too late for them to make the most of this generous offer. However, if they cannot find it in themselves to do the right thing and get behind the higher profile national park and national recreation monikers, I truly hope their letter to the president ends their involvement in the issue. And, that they will allow President Barack Obama to exercise his authority under the Antiquities Act without further diluting or sabotaging the $100 million of private investment in our region’s economy.
It is one thing not to have the political will to introduce enabling park legislation and quite another to work against your constituents in such a manner. Making the region dependent on government subsidies as their letter suggests is not the answer to its current plight.
Anita Mueller
Millinocket
LePage’s appalling stance on refugees
I am appalled and enraged that Gov. Paul LePage dares to speak for me in declaring that Maine will stop Syrian, or any other, refugees at our borders. Once again he has poisoned his obligation to represent all Maine residents with his bombast and chest-thumping.
I, for one, am not trembling and locking my doors down here in rural Lincolnville against hordes of bomb-bearing women and children displaced from any country. Well-screened refugees from anywhere in the world should be afforded asylum in our vast and wealthy land, and surely we should help our own domestic refugees soon, too.
Ric McKittrick
Lincolnville