'Wounded Knee'

I am a European, and therefore an inheritor of a tradition that includes both life-enhancing, humanising political dissent (Mennonites and Amish, the Reformation, the anti-slavery movement) and racist, destructive control (conquests both political and economic, slavery, genocide).  I am a European, and so, even though I was not born when it happened, the 1973 seige at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, when locals from Pine Ridge co-operated with the American Indian Movement and others to control a town to make their case for justice, feels like it has something to do with me.  That, right now, as a northern Irish British citizen emigrant to the United States, I benefit from a system that disenfranchises first nations people to the present day.  (I suppose I could also say that as an emigrant I may also identify with the notion of being marginalised, but I wouldn't want to stretch the point.  Right now I'm in a nice hospitality suite, eating a croque monsieur, and covering a film festival for goodness' sake.)

'Wounded Knee', Stanley Nelson and Marcia Smith's telling of the story weaves the distant and recent past in the narrative - it's a potted history of the American Indian, so we get forced boarding education, the original Wounded Knee massacre, and the breaking of treaties alongside found footage of the 71 day long siege.  Contemporary interviews with the protagonists - from the Indian leaders of the siege to the FBI agents tasked with resolving the conflict - add more flavour than is often the case with this kind of film.

'Wounded Knee' is something more than a linear re-telling of an under-familiar story; the sorrow of the history of how this people has been treated by the nation that has sometimes seemed to claim for itself a monopoly on freedom is palpable.  In that sense it's an important document; it might seem churlish to raise questions like the ones I'm about to pose, but they were the ones that occurred to me while watching.

Is the lionisation of warrior traditions a necessary part of the process whereby an oppressed people's dignity is asserted?  In other words, do you have to endorse the use of violence just because it is employed by people who are suffering on the vulnerable end of a power dynamic?  Let me be clear: the film's sympathies lie where they should - with the people who suffer.  And its failure to ask whether the violence is justified does not equal an endorsement.

But those questions - which of course predate the suffering of American Indians, and doesn't show too many signs of going away any time soon - shouldn't get in the way of the rest of this film's context.

Brush strokes:

Dennis Banks declaring that his anger toward the government derives from the fact that his forcible boarding school education led to him never being able to regain the friendship he had with his mother.

The desperation that leads to a representative voice crying 'I believe that the time has come when we have to commit violence in order to be heard'

The fact that the owners of the looted trading post at Wounded Knee refused to leave, stating that, contrary to the government's assertion, they were not hostages, and that they would stay put until the demands of the siege operators were met.

As I've said, the value of this film is in the fact that it gives context to the reasons for why the siege happened.  The fact that it doesn't ask whether or not the tactics were justified is, in some senses, probably a matter of my own preoccupations (although I do wish for more documentaries about  responses to injustice that rely on force to be more inquisitive about the means/ends journey).  At the end, when the death toll has been counted (2 Indians dead during the seige; 60 in its aftermath, leaving Pine Ridge with the highest per capita murder rate in the country), and the elder statesmen and women of the movement have said their piece, one thing is clear: there is unfinished business to attend to.

More Thoughts on Non-Violence (2)

Let's face it, some of us who hope to be inheritors of the peace activist tradition are regrettably notable for often lacking public credibility. While we all know people working at a grass roots level who can be held up as examples of the most heroic kind, often the public face of peace activism appears either ‘wooly’ or ‘strange’. In the UK, for instance, the de facto leader of the anti-Iraq War movement was an arrogant politician with a questionable ethical record, and without a meaningful strategy for addressing conflict.

In the US, Michael Moore’s tactics, while rooted, I believe, in a sincere sense of injustice, have alienated many people, and while striking, amusing, and sometimes moving, his more recent work has sometimes lacked the offering of a practical option for his audience to actually do anything to change the world around them.  This can change, of course, and I want to believe that Moore's best work is ahead of him.  Having said that, the stereotype of the grey-bearded, sandal-wearing hippy activist is both well-known, and not taken very seriously. (Note to grey-bearded, sandal-wearing hippy activists: I think you’re cool all the same. I hope one day to have a grey beard myself.)

Another challenge to non-violence being taken seriously is the sheer scope of violent threat, real or perceived, in the 21st century. The post-nuclear/‘war on terror’ age has the potential to leave us feeling overwhelmed by both the viciousness of the present human enmities, and what ‘our’ governments can do in return.

When planes fly into buildings, or when monks are tortured, or when whole governments are hi-jacked by a military coup or a 5-4 Supreme Court decision, or when 2 million people marching against Tony Blair’s support for the war in Iraq fail to stop it, it is reasonable to feel – initially at least – somewhat powerless. Reasonable, and initially, but not forever.

If you ask me 'How did Jesus raise the dead?' I will kiss you on the lips, and say 'like this'. - Rumi, still saying it, because I suspect he's still right

More thoughts to follow...

Jimmy Carter: Man from Plains

Finally got around to watching Jonathan Demme's humane documentary about Jimmy Carter 'Man from Plains' last night - a film about the most useful post-Presidency in US history.  What struck me the most was not the fact that President Carter invests body and soul in the cause of peace and justice - this part of his story is so familiar already.  No, the most eye-opening element of the film, which, I suppose, should also have been the most obvious, is the home life he shares with Rosalynn after 60 years of marriage.  They have a rhythm to their lives that wouldn't look out of place on an episode of 'Little House on the Prairie', except Pa and Ma are often away from home saving the world.

Cultural representations of southern living have been too entangled in the history of racism to fully break free yet; but the life the Carters have - a bit of a cookout here, building a house there, a bicycle stroll here, negotiating peace between Israel and Egypt there (and I don't say it this way to trivialise them at all) - seems to me to only be possible in a context where people know the difference between meaningful work and frenetic activity, rest and laziness, community and overcrowding.

(As for the film, well, I love Jonathan Demme's work - 'Rachel Getting Married' was one of the most honest and dramatically engaging films of last year; but I'm not the greatest fan of the approach he opts for in his documentaries - they tend to be unobtrusive fly on the wall pieces, without any questions coming from the director to the subject - I would have liked more of a sense of President Carter's interior journey, his motivations and inner conflicts, his struggles and how he feels when he sees something like success.)  Having said that, the integrity with which he carries himself, and the story of what he has done in the three decades since he left office, contrasting with the speakers' circuit and junket tourism that provide the very expensive bread and butter of most former presidents,  and sketched in this movie represents one of the most obvious personifications of Richard Rohr's notion that 'the best criticism of the bad is the practice of the good'.

More thoughts on Non-Violence (1)

If you ask me 'How did Jesus raise the dead?' I will kiss you on the lips, and say 'like this'. -    13th century Persian (Iranian) poet, Rumi

Last year heralded several important anniversaries, some of which were passed over with a little more nonchalance than I had expected.   1968 was not only the best year at the movies for the whole decade – seeing the release of 2001, The Wild Bunch, and Planet of the Apes, among others, but far more seriously, it saw the deaths of three towering late twentieth century figures.  If they had lived, it cannot be stressed highly enough just how different the world might be today.  Of course I'm talking about  Rev. Dr Martin Luther King, Jr.,  Senator Robert F Kennedy, and Brother Thomas Merton.  Many of us are hoping for a recovery of their visions for the good society, in which human beings recognize their interdependence, and are more interested in being rich inside than out.

One first step toward this recovery must be toward a serious engagement with non-violence as a way of life.  I’m going to use some of my next few posts to discuss this.  Everyone knows the teaching ‘Turn the other cheek’.  It is both a universally familiar, but not always practiced belief, with which almost everyone agrees, yet it might be reasonable to wonder if in fact no one knows what to do with it.  More than that, the attitude displayed in ‘turn the other cheek’ is considered, in our world, at best unpopular, at worst treacherous. I think one of the most pressing questions of our time is how to capture the public imagination with a vision for non-violence and negotiation that appears at least as compelling as the vision for war and belligerence presented by politicians, pro-violence religious figures, and elements of the media.

War, and other aggressive conflict – put simply – looks more exciting than peace.  In some respects, it looks more real, for peace, and peace-making are so often portrayed as ‘non-events’.  War – rhetorically and of course very literally – is where the action is at.

This is our starting point for reflecting on non-violence as a way of life.

If you ask me 'How did Jesus raise the dead?' I will kiss you on the lips, and say 'like this'. -    13th century Persian (Iranian) poet, Rumi

Photo above from www.maryt.wordpress.com

The What If? Foundation

Margaret Trost founded the What If?  foundation to engage with deeply distressing need in Haiti in the aftermath of her husband's sudden death.  She has redefined her future; the story of what happened next is a moving and inspirational combination of chance and compassion.  The What If? foundation is one of the most exciting examples of concrete social action happening anywhere today.  Find out more about the foundation here; a lovely interview with Margaret Trost on Progressive Radio here.