11:00.11.11

Where will you be at eleven o’clock on November 11th? Will it cross your mind to pause and reflect on those who have sacrificed to defend us from all enemies, both foreign and domestic? Mine may be the last generation to  recognize Armistice Day.

In the two hundred and forty years of American history (the years of nationhood and those that led to it), we have been “at war” for two hundred and three of them. That’s roughly thirty-seven years of peace. And at least a third of those years of conflict have been with our own Native population, including wars against the:

• Cherokee
• Creek
• Seminole
• Comanche
• Arikara
• Cayuse
• Ute
• Yavapai
• Nisqually
• Muckleshoot
• Puyallup
• Klickitat
• Haida
• Tlingit
• Yakima
• Walla Walla
• Umatilla
• Nez Perce
• Navajo
• Shoshone
• Yuma
• Mohave
• Sioux
• Cheyenne
• Arapaho
• Bannock
• Lakota
• Modoc
• Dakota
• Palouse
• Yaqui
• Pima
• Opata
• Creek
• Paiute

Have I left anyone out?

So, as we pause to honor those in military service — especially those Native Americans like the Navajo “wind-talkers” who have served in our genuinely foreign wars — remember the current government-sponsored corporate war against the Standing Rock Sioux for construction of a pipeline guaranteed to add wealth to a handful at the expense of our most vulnerable.

“La guerre est non finie.”

[#856]