Last week I finished reading Louise Erdrich's fine new novel
The Plague of Doves. The story is really several intertwining stories all linked to a racist lynching of three Native men in the early 20th century. The perpetrators were never brought to justice and their atrocity reverberates down the generations. Erdrich's book, in fact her whole body of work, brings home how some world-historic crimes are so massive that not only are their repercussions unending, but in a very real sense they happened only yesterday, only a moment ago, for all the millions of individuals still every day affected and whole societies forever misshapen by them. The two prime instances are the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the system of chattel slavery on which the wealth of the U.S. and much of the European ruling classes rests, and the theft of the Americas and near-total genocide of their indigenous peoples. Literature can play a unique role in illuminating all this. We readers are indebted to writers like Erdrich who tell these stories. It must be such hard work. It must take a toll to plumb such mournful depths. Here is the artist as witness, as truth-teller, as conveyor of bitter unforgettable memories, as resister to silence.
This is a week for mourning, for telling truths, for naming the dead and honoring them. While we're encouraged to eat gluttonous portions of turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes and pie, some spend the day another way. Every year since 1970, Native people and supporters of their ongoing struggle for justice in the face of hundreds of broken treaties have gone to Plymouth, Mass., for a march and rally marking the National Day of Mourning.
The National Day of Mourning is sponsored by
United American Indians of New England. This year, UAINE calls on supporters to gather Thursday at 12 noon at Coles Hill in Plymouth to speak and hear some truth about crimes long ago and ongoing.
