Perhaps the World Ends Here

January 14, 2020 3:55 AM

Climate disaster at Wounded Knee

Wounded Knee holds both the bloody abyss and the unconquered vision of this continent’s First Peoples. It is the site of a massacre and of the Independent Oglala Nation. Both stories are ours equally: genocide and its aftershocks in the climate; the Ghost Dance, the American Indian Movement, and the campaign against the Keystone XL pipeline. Some days, I feel we have been condemned to the most wretched fate of any people—a slow, painful, and intergenerational death. But then, I see our people rising. And sometimes I see both at once, in the same frame, and in the same place. As the climate breaks down, we remain caught between both legacies of Wounded Knee—genocide and freedom—the horror of the massacre and the dream of the massacred.

posted by poffin boffin (3 comments total)

This was a truly worthwhile read, puffin boffin. Thank you. The section about meth was hard to read because I know some victims of a ruthless addiction to the stuff. As a selfish reader, I was happy the story was balanced by accomplishments as well as losses.
posted by Bella Donna at 4:23 AM on January 14, 2020 [2 favorites]

It's good to see Harper's still doing muck-raking. And for those who don't know the origin of the term, muck-raking journalism used to be a badge of honor, rake through the muck of obfuscation to find gems.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 5:04 AM on January 14, 2020 [5 favorites]

Front-line First Peoples' accounts of climate crisis are finding more space, but still nothing like what they deserve. (Thanks for the link; the author is quite a figure.)
posted by progosk at 4:40 AM on January 15, 2020