![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Lost in plain sight.
Oct. 17th, 2005 10:22 pmBack during the summer TNT aired a mini-series called Into the West. Basically it is about America's move into the western part of the country and follows the lives of a white family and a Lakota family. It is quite well done and I think it's relatively unbiased.
It has been a little hard for me to watch though. No one is really shown in a positive light and there is a lot of violence against others. What makes me think the most is the greed and cruelty shown. It also makes me realize the wrong people do when they believe they are entitled to whatever they want. I'm also understanding why my great-great grandmother left her life behind when she married a white man. This fact has always made me sad.
So how many of us are lost in plain sight? For whatever circumstance that a child was born with a white and an Indian parent, that grew up and looked just enough white but not enough Indian to blend into the "civilized" world. How much has been lost in the effort to blend? Even now, how much history do people leave behind as they try to forget where they came from? Are we really making a better life for ourselves as we erase our past? There are so many areas beyond race where this can apply - economic status, education, where one grows up, etc. At what point do we remember to honor the past in order to find ourselves?
It has been a little hard for me to watch though. No one is really shown in a positive light and there is a lot of violence against others. What makes me think the most is the greed and cruelty shown. It also makes me realize the wrong people do when they believe they are entitled to whatever they want. I'm also understanding why my great-great grandmother left her life behind when she married a white man. This fact has always made me sad.
So how many of us are lost in plain sight? For whatever circumstance that a child was born with a white and an Indian parent, that grew up and looked just enough white but not enough Indian to blend into the "civilized" world. How much has been lost in the effort to blend? Even now, how much history do people leave behind as they try to forget where they came from? Are we really making a better life for ourselves as we erase our past? There are so many areas beyond race where this can apply - economic status, education, where one grows up, etc. At what point do we remember to honor the past in order to find ourselves?
