brethren priestess online

So I finally did it. I broke down and started a blog. It was only a matter of time, really, because I love to write and I love to think that other people want to read what I write, and since blogs are the next new thing, of course I would eventually have to start one. I always resist new technology and then give in; I don’t seem to learn.

I suppose I resist blogs especially because they seem rather masturbatory (not that masturbation is bad, per se). Unless I am engaging in some extremely unique and/or profound experience (which some might say seminary is), then why would others want to read my thoughts? Aren’t there hundreds and thousands and millions of other blogs out there in the inter-space, little voices crying out to be read and revered? Why am I so special that my thoughts need to be preserved and made accessible to anyone?

But these are just more idle thoughts, until I start thinking about what blogs say about our US elite society in a long history of oppression. I have always lived on land that was stolen from indigenous people, and here in California, land that was stolen in some of the most brutal genocides of any of the many genocides on these American continents. The California Gold Rush prompted some of the most sudden and vicious campaigns of ‘extermination,’ by thrusting hordes of single, greedy, armed men onto a strip of land, forcing it to mourn its richness of resources and the violent avarice that richness sparked. And somehow, even though the writings of the very killers themselves refer to their violence as intended to ‘exterminate,’ a fairly clear statement of purpose, the word ‘genocide’ catches in the throats of US history books. Or if the issue of mass slaughter is addressed, the next assumption is that the victims of the genocide are ‘extinct,’ and thus, people for the elites to mourn, but not living reminders to sacrifice any privilege to take responsibility for current grievances. ‘We weren’t the ones who committed the murders, after all, so how can we be blamed for benefiting from them?’

Of course, the murders of indigenous peoples in the Americas were genocides, even when it was not total extermination of populations. But somehow this is hard to understand. The Muwekma Ohlone people are not legally recognized as an extant population, and their traditional lands (running from San Jose up to Berkeley-Richmond and San Francisco, on the two sides of the Bay) are certainly not being offered back to the Ohlone any time soon. All but one of the tribes along the California coast from LA to San Francisco remains unrecognized (it’s prime real estate, after all). Some Ohlone have requested the return of part of their lands, starting with SF’s Presidio, the site of first Spanish and Mexican and then US forts, forts from which troops would be sent to round up slaves for ranchero owners. It isn’t happening, but what a statement that would be for one of the most progressive cities in the country to return a key piece of land to its people? The cloud of ‘smug’ floating over our heads might clear up just a bit.

To return to my earlier point, I wonder what it means that those of us in the US elite enough to afford ready access to fancy technology feel important enough as individuals to maintain involved accounts of our inner thoughts and daily experiences, while our society was built on the systematic denial of that individuality to millions of people? - millions of people who were not allowed to live the lives they wanted to live, let alone the high-tech lives we enjoy - people killed out of the greedy, mistaken belief that we have not been blessed by an abundance great enough for all to live in peace. Are blogs challenging or perpetuating that belief? Blogs allow millions of voices to fly around the world and gain some sort of ETERNITY, yet are they talking about the millions of voices denied an eternity for their languages, cultures, and religions?

Well, I’m still writing. My thanks to Cal Berkeley PhD student David Raymond for his insights about California genocides, and for Emily’s passion that drove me to attend his talk in the first place. The three worlds cry.

I am struck that the newish Bolivian president Evo Morales, who was elected two months ago on a populist tide that actually appreciated his indigenous ancestry and union leadership, is a great example of the way different ‘frameworks for critical engagement’ operate in the public minds. The North American/Western European media can spin him as a loony conspiracy theorist (like Venezualan President Hugo Chavez) hiding in his palace, afraid of ‘neo-liberal’ corporationists who have him ‘padlocked.’ Or, independent and Two-Thirds World media can represent him as speaking plainly about the evil effects of capitalist globalization, only unique in that most national leaders are groggily in bed with the elite beneficiaries of that patriarchal, white-supremacist, imperialist capitalist globalization. I don’t know the man, so can I form a view of him that is more accurate?

In a BBC interview, Evo states an observation of social progress I can agree with:
“I have a lot of trouble understanding all the detail of finance and administration - but if you combine intellectual and professional capacity with a social conscience, you can change things: countries, structures, economic models, colonial states.”

And besides - he put a picture of Che up in the ornate presidential suite. You gotta respect the ovaries that takes.