Category: The Truth Is In Here

Land Acknowledgement

I wasn’t surprised, and was very happy that the Fulbright Association asked all of the speakers at the annual conference in Denver, Colorado to open their talks with a land acknowledgement. There’s my first slide and here are my opening remarks:

When I was 21, I learned that my great-grandmother on my biological father’s side was a full-blooded Cherokee [which I first discussed publicly and proudly in my autobiographical theatrical performance The Golden Horseshoe: A Lecture on Tragedy in 2004].  I was always interested in history, so I knew something about the Cherokee but my learning of this hidden part of my heritage made me more passionate to learn as much as I could about my newly found ancestry.  I was born and raised in southwestern Virginia but I was living in New York City at the time.  When I would go up to friends and say, “I just found out I’m part Cherokee,” they would vaguely say, “Oh, so like, are you from Oklahoma? Are you an Okie?”

I’d say, “No, genius. The Cherokee out west were marched there at gunpoint from the East Coast. It was called the Trail of Tears.  Thousands died on the march.  A small group managed to stay behind by rapidly assimilating in order to keep their homes. That meant adopting Christianity and dressing like white people.  They’re called the Eastern Band of Cherokee and their descendants, my ancestors, are still there today.”

So I feel the need, the joy, the honor, of saying, as clumsy it as it might come out, that this land we’re on today in Denver used to belong to the Arapaho people and Cheyenne people, and it had been theirs for a very long time. The trouble started when the European side of my ancestry showed up looking for gold in the 1850s and everything quickly went to hell for these nations.

You’ll never guess what ultimately happened:  they were forcibly relocated out of Colorado. Another Trail of Tears.

I ask that you ponder that and take a little time sometime to learn, as I’m always learning, more of that history, and maybe even more of the First Nations history of wherever in the US you call home.

War in Europe

US Department of Defense post-strike bomb damage assessment photo used by Joint Staff Vice Director for Strategic Plans and Policy Maj. Gen. Charles F. Wald, U.S. Air Force, during a press briefing on NATO Operation Allied Force in the Pentagon on May 5, 1999. Photo via https://www.defense.gov/Multimedia/Photos/igphoto/2001238761/

I keep hearing intelligent, well-informed journalists and commentators referring to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as some version of “the first war in Europe since the end of WW II.”  This is mindbogglingly false. Do we have collective amnesia?  I hope not.

Here are some trigger words to jar our memories: rape camps, ethnic cleansing, Srebrenica, Milosevic, Karadzic, Slovenian War, Croatian War, genocide, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatian paramilitaries massacring Serbian Orthodox Christian civilians, Serbian paramilitaries massacring Croatian Catholic civilians, Yugoslav Muslims being hit hard by all of them, UNPROFOR, Kosovo War, Balkans Conflict.

It culminated in the US, under the auspices of NATO, bombing Belgrade, the first time a European capital had been bombed by another country since the end of WW II, and Russian tanks rolling into Kosovo with the blessing of the US and NATO.  The circumstances at that time were very different than they are in the present conflict. During the entire period of the breakup of Yugoslavia, about 150,000 people died and the wars created millions of refugees.

I am not suggesting a question of whether we should or shouldn’t have bombed Yugoslavia. Opinions run wild on that and I’m not trying to spark a debate. I’ve had enough of those to last me a lifetime. I’m pointing out that to call Russia’s Ukraine invasion the first war in Europe since the end of WW II is to shamefully disregard the many thousands of civilians who suffered and died during what are now collectively called The Yugoslav Wars. Let’s not erase these victims from history.

I would have liked to see at least one news article these past five days that began with something like, “Not since the wars in Yugoslavia have we seen such a…” or “Not since the US-led NATO bombing of Serbia, albeit under markedly different circumstances, has there been a…”  But not one. The Associated Press’ description of the present horrific invasion of Ukraine is the only accurate one I’ve stumbled upon so far:  Putin’s invasion is “the largest land invasion in Europe since the end of WW II.”  That is true, even though it seems crafted to circumvent any mention of the US and NATO as being the first to bomb Europe since the end of WW II. Right or wrong, for or against, the Yugoslav Wars need to be acknowledged instead of wiped from our collective memories.

I am very opposed to Russia’s Ukraine invasion and proud that the world is standing up to Putin, much to his surprise, but I’m seeing that often our messaging is not accurate and erases this tremendous loss of  lives that only ended about 22 years ago.

Will we have forgotten about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine 20 years from now? We might not think so right now but I fear we will forget. As an American, this saddens me.

I was in Serbia and Croatia just before the period of our 1999 bombing campaign, thanks to receiving an award from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and was inspired to write the anti-war play Tesla’s Letters. I later returned to Croatia to teach at a summer film and theatre workshop sponsored by the Soros Foundation and Zagreb University. Tesla’s Letters premiered in New York in April of 1999 during the NATO bombing campaign. Here is the New York Times review of it for further context.

Thanks,

Jeff

My Dinner With Tina

Why is this man making a hand-rabbit? Scroll down to find out.

If you missed my interview last night with the masterful Tina Brock of the IRC and would like to hear more about my mis/adventures in India, my work as a Fulbright Scholar and the nonfiction book I’m currently finishing, along with Tesla, ghosts, paan, religion, David Ives, and a few other surprises, you can catch it here on the IRC’s youtube channel:

 

 

Happy MLK Day

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MLK

“Cowardice asks the question, ‘Is it safe?’ Expediency asks the question, “Is it politic?” Vanity asks the question, “Is it popular?” But, conscience asks the question, “Is it right?” And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but one must take it because one’s conscience tells one that it is right.”

— Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.