Essential Native Wisdom Edited by Carol Kelly-Gangi

 

No offered quote.

I have dozens upon dozens of anthologies, omnibuses, and collections of Indigenous quotations, speeches, and observations.

The best of them are historically accurate and take the time to confirm and verify the utterances.

The worst of them repeat unsourced commonplaces.

The best of them also share a quality of providing a bit of insight into an alternate mindset. Be that an alternate way to view war, peace, forgiveness, possessions or even our own assumptions of history.

What the best of them all have in common is a running theme that portrays a surviving nobility despite abuses and hardships.

Well, that is not what we have here. I suppose it was bound to happen—the quote book goes woke.

Don’t presume my use of the word “woke” to mean that I am “anti-woke” or I am myself “woke.”

Read my use of the word to mean I am fatigued with a dogmatic view that chooses to cull, sift, parse all utterances and wisdom for a preferred point of view.

I prefer my historical information undiluted—give me the good, the bad, the warts, the smiles.

What we have here is a vast collection of utterances that, for the most part, lean heavily on grievance, mistreatment, loss.

Yes, of course, this is a large part of many an indigenous people’s story, but it is not the whole story.

This volume behaves as if grievance were the mainstay of the native experience.

I am in no way asking for a whitewash of history, or to ignore the injustice. On the contrary, I want it all. The atrocities and malfeasance on both sides are shocking.

But…what we have here, primarily with 20^th century quotes is so “What we used to be…” uttered with trembling lip it robs these astonishing cultures of nobility. Denies a sense of agency.

I have no doubt the editor intended a good thing, to rectify and open eyes, but in this form of rectification we are left with little to admire.

Instead, we are asked to pity.

First Peoples deserve better treatment than they have received historically, but they also deserve better than this unmeaning patronizing look at their story.