Talking frankly to someone in New Zealand today:
[she asked; i said...]
I live between Boston and New York, in what's called the Northeast/New England.
I misspoke about the Maori museum here. What I meant is that the Maori, as Indigenous people who survived somewhat respected and intact, are inspiring.
Where I live is where the Pilgrims landed.
These English religious zealots would have starved to death without Indigenous aid in the first few years.
Yet, within another few decades, as majority-white became the thing, war broke out between Indigenous and invasive settlers ... and a pattern of genocide first pursued and perfected in New England -- to move Indigenous tribes permanently off their historical lands -- became federal policy; eventually coast to coast, as the centuries rolled on.
Here we are in 2022.
The evil deeds have been done. Later US immigrants (like me and my Irish-Scottish forebears) have benefited from the opportunities.
In the writing I do for this Indigenous-led museum, I refer to early English settlers as "an invasive species." And that's the only thing I can do: try to change perspectives among today's beneficiaries, beneficiaries of centuries of slaughter and inhumanity and firepower and cruelty.
love and maybe changed minds ... @ best