Help indigenous people flourish
The Oct. 10 BDN editorial, “Instead of Columbus, let’s celebrate the audacity of exploration,” provided an important lens through which to understand European settlers have encroached on the territory of indigenous peoples throughout the United States.
For centuries, the U.S. has been making promises to indigenous people to provide essential needs such as proper health care and funding for school systems. On multiple occasions, these commitments have fallen by the wayside and indigenous populations are left to fend for themselves. As a country, we cannot let these cultural groups go without the basic needs to make ends meet. These indigenous groups could once be found throughout what is now the U.S. in vast numbers. Besides being a matter of right and wrong, we owe it to them to do more to help their communities grow.
We need to start thinking about how as a country we can be a role model for future generations to help native people flourish. Imagine what would happen if they ceased to exist. With it an important part of our history would fade into the distance. We must have no more broken treaties, and no more trying to cover up the past. It is time for the truth to be told with regards to who really was the first population to live in North America and the true role that European explorers played in the “discovery” of another world.
Benjamin Bucklin
Searsport
Race and privilege in Portland
As the director of Studio 408 where Asher Woodworth has been a guest teacher, I found it interesting that until his Oct. 25 interview with the BDN few understood his “ tree stunt” was actually a dance. Indeed, being a student of famous improviser Min Tanaka, Woodworth used slow, sustained movements against a rushed urban environment to draw attention and disrupt business as usual.
Some have aptly pointed to his white privilege, noting that the women of color who were arrested under the same misdemeanor at the Black Lives Matter protest on Commercial street in July were not treated with the humane approach that Woodworth received from Portland police. Clearly, one’s ability to safely disrupt the flow of traffic is dependent upon one’s race and privilege in society.
In a city where “dance” often is defined by expensive stages and classical training, at Studio 408 we are working to complicate the hierarchy between performer and audience. We see dance as a way to ask questions of the world and research social issues. We feel responsible as artists to consider how our bodies occupy public space.
Whether people found it interesting, problematic, or even ridiculous, Woodworth’s tree performance has opened a long-overdue conversation about dance in Maine. The social media commotion and subsequent community reaction has pointed a spotlight on the politics of whose bodies are safe, whose voices get heard and who is allowed to threaten the status quo.
Kristen Stake
Portland
Issue senior housing bond
The governor’s continued refusal to issue the $15 million senior housing bond because of his ongoing feud with House Speaker Mark Eves is immoral and possibly illegal. The senior housing bond was approved by 70 percent of Maine voters and the Legislature. It is intended to provide badly needed housing for Maine’s low-income seniors. Without the bond funds, many seniors remain in unsafe houses or apartments, with their life and safety at risk. That’s the immoral part.
The illegal part is based on the Maine Constitution that makes clear that “any measure referred to the people and approved by a majority of the votes given thereon shall … take effect and become a law.” The Constitution goes on to declare that “all power is inherent in the people,” followed by the governor’s constitutional duty to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”
The voter approval bonds are law. The governor does not have the authority to veto the will of the voters. He cannot pick and choose which laws to comply with and which he will ignore. He cannot because of his ongoing feud with Eves thumb his nose at the Legislature and the people of Maine.
John Nale
Waterville