Lost in plain sight.

[fancytalk]

Back 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?

Comments

[curefreak.livejournal.com]

You raise some very interesting points here. I think it comes down to labels. As our society grows and the chance of anonymously slipping down the cracks increases, we get applied and apply ourselves with more and more labels in an effort to be accepted, be identified and to know ourselves.

I was rejected for being English when I came to this country. I tried, as an 8 year old, to lose everything English, accent, words and even hid my parents with shame :( The thing is while you may pass as whatever you are trying to be, deep inside you know you never fit. But you can't go back to where you originated either, as you turned to back. You become what I term as a "Displaced Person" who never knows where they belong.

[yesimthegirl.livejournal.com]

You do realize that we could get into a deep philosophical discussion about this?

The label thing is something that has bothered me since as long as I can remember. I never understood why some people were "better" than others. That's not how I was raised, but as a child you do pick up that "better than thou" feeling from others. I was the kid who would have been your friend when you started school in a new country. For me, it would have been "cool" to be friends with the new kid, the accent would have been an added bonus. :)

I realize that I try to erase some things since living on the other side of the country. I can't erase my accent and that's the dead giveaway that I'm from the East coast. Made worse because it is a southern accent, which means I'm a backwoods, redneck, hick to all these Californians.

So do we become a "Displaced Person" on the outside, the inside or both?

[curefreak.livejournal.com]

I think the Displaced Person is more on the inside. Or at least it is for me. The outside just fades into nothing and is basically ignored at best and ridiculed at worst. :-/

I have no label as such on you, but I know your friendship makes me smile. We may never have spoken and may never meet, but you are a valued part of my so-called life :)

Sometimes I feel that is the advantage with Live Journal, we don't judge, we get to know the person. I can't be revolted because User X is picking his nose as he speaks, or user Y has dandruff and hasn't showered in a month. I hear/read their views, thoughts, dreams etc. without attributing them directly to a categorised person if that makes sense?

[yesimthegirl.livejournal.com]

I think I feel more displaced on the outside and not the inside. I'd like to think I'm fairly sure of myself and know where I belong/need to be. The outside is the part that isn't sure about being here, so I hide. Maybe that is the inside though . ..

So we're at a disadvantage that we've never spoken and may never meet, but the only label that I would put on you is friend. Plain and simple you are just curefreak. You are what you are and there are no expectations about you or what you do or might do or anything else. You just are.

I agree that LJ has the advantage of non-judging. I think because everything is mostly words that in reading you actually see more than what the spoken words could relate. Are we better off hiding behind the computer screen? Maybe so. We've got avatars, icons, and user names to hide behind here. We get to relax behind the computer screen because no one will find out that we are or are not what we say we are. In real life, we slap on the clothes, the makeup, the hairstyle, the job, etc. and hide behind an image that we want everyone to believe is real. We spend most of our time hoping that we won't get caught in our real skin.

[emilybrianne.livejournal.com]

This has sort of happened within my own family many generations past. My grandmother introduced me to the thrill and mystery (and frustration) of genealogy when I was a teenager. We knew that on my dad's side (this was my grandmother on my mother's side who taught me to hunt down my past) there was a Native American influence. Cherokee, we think. Despite the stature, coloring, and physical features of my grandfather and his kin, and even my own father we cannot find any documented link. We have it traced back to one particular couple. Brendan Spray and Sally/Sarah Camp. We believe that Sally is the Cherokee. But back in those days they hid their ancestry so when the census rolled through, those that could were documented as white. They indeed erased her past, and I wonder if I'll ever know for sure.

[yesimthegirl.livejournal.com]

The joys of genealogy. It's frustrating when you can see the connection, but can't figure out how to put it together. For me the problem is connecting her back to the reservation. I know her Christian name when she left, not the name that would be in the documentation for the reservation. I tried going through the Bureau of Indian Affairs, but that's just a bunch of red tape.