I think I miscommunicated in my “sins of the ancestors” post, and your response is helping me see how. The family research you’re doing is valuable (and by all means I’d encourage you to keep digging into it!), but I’m also talking about “ancestors” on the collective level. Individual family inheritance (of land, wealth, social connections) is one way that privilege (particularly class privilege) is perpetuated from generation to generation, but it’s not the only way. When I say “I benefit from the sins of my ancestors” I’m referring in part, but not solely, to my biological ancestors.

What do I mean by this? I grew up on fertile farmland in northern Indiana. Only a few miles from my parents’ house is the spot where used to stand Five Medals’ Potawatomi village. Five Medals (or Onaska) made peace with the United States in 1795 (Treaty of Greenville) and met with several presidents. Nevertheless, the US Army torched his people’s village and all their surrounding crops in 1812, and then again in 1813. In 1838 Menominee (leader of the last major Potawatomi settlement in northern Indiana) was “tied like a dog” and he and his people were force-marched to Kansas, a journey on which many of them died.

As far as I know, I personally didn’t have any great-grandfathers in the Army divisions that torched Five Medals’ village, or chained Menominee. But I personally did grow up enjoying all the benefits of living on the land that they violently cleared of its Potawatomi inhabitants. The “wholesome rural community” that I grew up in was almost entirely white - every single institution I or my parents had to deal with throughout my childhood was run by white people. In sharp contrast to the few families of color in that rural area, I never had to worry about my physical safety because of my race, never had to deal with racist taunts of other schoolkids on the school-bus, my parents never had to worry that they’d be turned down for a bank loan because of their race. In short, many of the benefits that I and my family enjoyed in that community were benefits that we enjoyed because we are white. That’s one small example of white privilege in my life. And that particular set of white privileges is directly descended from the Potawatomi Trail of Death, which made all that fertile northern Indiana farmland available for farming by German and Swiss immigrants instead of the Potawatomi.

I don’t think it matters all that much whether I am personally descended from the soldiers who set fire to Five Medals’ village, or the soldiers who “hastened the stragglers” with “severe gestures and bitter words” on the Trail of Death, or the squatters who settled on land that had been specifically reserved for the Potawatomi by treaty (like Mennonites did on the Conestoga reservation in Lancaster County, PA in the early 1700s). I am not responsible for their actions, but I believe that I am responsible to understand clearly how their actions still shape the world I live in, and to live responsibly with that knowledge.

I can’t “give back” my entire childhood to anyone. White privilege is far too pervasive for me to be able to find all of the specific benefits that I enjoy because of it and give them back to someone, and then be totally “free and clear.” I only wish it were that easy.

When Karissa and I talk with churches about our work at Pine Ridge, we often use the analogy of a hit-and-run accident. One person (let’s say Peter) runs over a pedestrian (Maria, perhaps) one night, and drives off without stopping. Maria loses years of her life to slow and painful physical rehab. Peter tries to excise the incident from his memory. We ask our audience to generate lists of emotions that Peter and Maria might deal with twenty years down the road. We get remarkably similar lists every time we do the exercise. Peter: guilt, shame, denial. Maria: anger, self-pity, pride. And then we ask what Peter would need to do, twenty years later, if he wanted to connect with Maria and establish a real relationship. The answers are usually obvious to everyone: he has to approach Maria very humbly (by all means don’t lecture her on why the whole thing was her fault, or on how she should get over it and get on with life), he has to be open to the need for him to pay real recompense for what he did (without dictating to Maria what the recompense will be), etc. People often make direct suggestions about reparations (i.e. “Peter should pay her medical bills”).

This is, of course, a massively simplified analogy, and it can’t fully do justice to the deep complexity of the histories of peoples over hundreds of years. Nevertheless, I think the broad strokes apply very well to the situation of Euro-Americans and Native people (I’d also guess that this might be relevant in other cases: slavery, or the sordid history of US imperialism on the Mexico border - but I simply haven’t spent as much time learning about or thinking about those situations).

You ask “what can one white person do”? There’s a verse from Leviticus that Karissa and I often use in churches. Leviticus 26:40-42 (NRSV, abridged): “…if they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their ancestors… if then their uncircumcised heart is humbled and they make amends for their iniquity, then will I remember my covenant with Jacob; I will remember also my covenant with Isaac and also my covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land.”

Actually, the Hebrew Bible is chock-full of verses about collective repentance and the critical importance of confessing both present and past iniquities - this is just one of many. But I think it provides a pretty good model. Don’t jump straight to “doing”. Start with “confess the iniquity”. That’s the internal work of re-learning our history, moving from the self-serving Euro-superiority myths that we got such a good look at in the “sins of the ancestors” comments thread, and that many of us were imprinted with to a greater or lesser degree in school, to an honest attempt to understand what history looks like from the perspective of oppressed peoples. It’s also the work that you’re currently doing in exploring your family history as it relates to the experience of oppressed peoples.

Then we have “humble our hearts.” To me as a straight white man, that speaks to the humility of recognizing that my entire life, every nook and cranny, has been shaped by male, white, hetero privilege in more ways than I can even see. And lastly, “make amends for the iniquity.” This is where the rubber meets the road - it could mean political advocacy for reparations or return of the Black Hills, it could mean making some hard choices in my personal life about what to do with land or wealth that I have. It might mean a lot of things. But I don’t think it’s really up to me (or Peter) to determine exactly what the amends are. It’s up to me to start by learning to listen carefully and humbly to people whose voices don’t dominate the airwaves. That’s the only way I can begin to learn what the amends might need to be. It’s up to me to prepare myself emotionally and spiritually, so in those often-unexpected moments when the needed action is staring me right in the face, I am ready to take it instead of running the other way.

When we move back to Indiana, I don’t know yet what I will do about the history of that land. But I’ll start by doing my research (so I can “confess the iniquity” with clarity). Part of that research will also be to learn more about the Pokagon band of Potawatomi in southern Michigan and the Prairie Band Potawatomi in Kansas (descendants of those forced on the Trail of Death) and listen carefully for the issues that are currently important to them (without imposing myself as a burden in the “here I am, educate me!” lazy style). Hopefully, in time, I’ll begin to understand what “making amends” might really look like in that situation - not just something symbolic to make me feel better, but real action towards real reconciliation. Given the current state of denial in mainstream American culture, I don’t even expect to see real amends in my lifetime. But at the very least I can open my eyes, turn around, and try to begin walking in that direction.

Bonus link: have you heard about the privately-run prisons we’re building to contain the imminent threat to our national security posed by two-year-old immigrant children?

In the discussion thread, Hugo said this (if you want the full context, you can go read the thread, which is interesting in its own right. And apologies to Hugo for picking on him, he just happened to offer up a softball-sized version of the same diversionary truisms I hear over and over from white people who don’t actually want to think about historical responsibility) :

We need to be honest about the mistakes of our ancestors. We also need to see those mistakes in a historical context, and avoid the tendency to mythologize and glamorize those who were the victims of colonization. Cruelty is a human universal, and sin — at least the capacity for sin — is found in every tribe and nation under the sun. Collectively, some have inflicted both more harm (and perhaps more good) than others.

And I respond:

On the one hand, yes, of course; and on the other hand, no. These are precisely the vacuous truisms that are so tempting to _replace_ substantive reflection on what our collective history means and what it says about us.

I can’t count the number of times that I’ve heard something along the lines of “cruelty is a human universal” from white people as a blanket dismissal of the idea that Euro-American culture might have anything significant to learn from indigenous people. Same goes for the tired bit about “don’t mythologize the victims of colonization.” You don’t have to be a romanticizing, mythologizing, self-hating fool to be willing to simply look at another culture and say, “You know, I value many of the things my ancestors taught me. But I think these folks have some things figured out about how to live on this earth that my ancestors once knew, but lost somewhere along the way.” In my experience, the resistance to this idea is huge - and the cliches in your paragraph are a key piece of that resistance.

By choosing the word “mistakes” to describe the wholesale destruction of peoples, and by emphasizing “cruelty is a human universal”, what you do is close off the possibility of real analysis of the causes of genocide and colonization. You choose to pre-suppose that it was all an accident, a mistake, something that really anyone would have done if they’d been in a similar situation. You a priori eliminate the possibility that there are discernible historical factors in medieval Europe that led to the subsequent colonization of much of the world, and that looking closely at those factors might help us to see parts of our inherited culture that reflect colonizer values rather than values that will help us make this “living on earth” thing work out for everyone.

Many people talk about privilege and “working for a more equitable society” entirely in the present tense, without any reference to the critical role of accepting _real responsibility_ for the sins of our ancestors. Responsibility in this case means recognizing that we benefit from our ancestors’ sins (i.e. owning slaves, stealing land), and then making things right. This choice has very practical implications. Here in South Dakota, there are plenty of well-meaning white folks who will say, “Yes! Let’s work towards a more equitable society!” The unspoken implication is: become a part of my society, on my terms, and I’ll try to help you get your piece of the pie. There are far fewer white people who are willing to hear Lakota people say “We don’t want your society - we want you to give back the Black Hills that you stole, and then leave us alone.” Doing the latter requires an understanding that the theft of the Black Hills is not ancient history, it’s of critical present-day relevance. Same goes for slavery - it ain’t ancient history, folks. We don’t just need “a more equitable society” - we need to make actual, physical reparations! Until there’s been real recompense, the wounds of the past are still open and bleeding - they are, in fact, the continuing wounds of the present.

(One slightly different take is an article I saw years ago - which I can’t find online - on the “Moctezuma Plan” - the New World’s massive loan of precious metals and natural resources to finance the rebuilding of colonial Europe, which the author was suggesting it might be time for the US and Europe to repay to American indigenous people, to the tune of several hundred billion dollars or so). EDIT: Found the article. It’s actually entitled the Marshalltezuma Plan.

For more detailed thoughts on this whole subject (including a bunch of fascinating Bible verses), check out a talk that Karissa and I gave at her home church entitled Sins of the Fathers (yeah, I know that’s sexist. Of course, if we’re talking about colonization and slavery, mostly it is the fathers’ sins we’re referring to).