Tip of the Texas Holocaust

Production note: this entry was originally written in mid-December 2007; I was waiting to post it until I had received permission from people mentioned in it. One of these permission-giving emails got waylaid by an overeager spam-detector. So, a little belatedly, here is a post marking the experience of researching the histories of indigenous peoples in the region of the Rio Grande delta.

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It's probably too soon to speak of the research I'm doing on South Texas history; perspective is often something found in the rearview mirror, rather than in the midst of an experience. But this blog is an attempt to document the process of writing the dissertation, and right now this process really hurts. I want to try to get at why, and something of what that means.

Most of the histories I have found -- whether written from Anglo or Latino/a perspectives -- begin with Spanish contact and conquest. I have not read one yet that has been seriously critical of the impact of that contact and conquest on the indigenous peoples, except for David Stannard's American Holocaust, which is written not just about South Texas but about the impact of contact, conquest and colonization on North and South America.

Let's start with a couple of basic findings. Tens of millions of people lived in the Americas before European contact. Within a few generations after initial contact, virtually every population experienced a 90 to 98 percent drop in numbers. In effect, one in twenty native people was left standing; over 100 million people died. Much of this decimation was due to the diseases inadvertently brought by the conquerors, to which indigenous American people had no resistance; but it would be disingenuous to shrug our shoulders over this inadvertency and ignore the brutal and deliberate murders, enslavement and exploitation perpetrated against the indigenous peoples.

Spanish and Anglo priests and preachers declared both disease and deliberate depredation God's will, clearing the path for those who would make better use of the land.

In many cases, disease dramatically reduced population numbers before conquistadors or colonists ever arrived in an area; this appears to have been the case in South Texas.

Archaeological findings show evidence of peoples living, hunting, gathering, farming and trading through the region for thousands of years before European contact. The earliest population counts in the Rio Grande river delta area are based on Spanish reports and indicate a population of at 15-19,000 around 1740; given the abundant food sources, this is probably low, and may indicate a population already reduced by disease. Given the likelihood of infection, sickness and deaths triggered by the first Spanish visits in 1521, and current estimates of 90-98% population crashes after initial contact, the delta population may have been as high as 300,000 pre-contact.

In any case, subsequent figures in later years are always lower, showing that the net result of Spanish contact was negative: figures for the region drop to 2,000 in 1772, 800 in 1773, 650 in 1798.

It is important to remember that these dropping numbers mean people dying and communities being dismembered, communities of individual human beings who are sickened, murdered, enslaved, and rendered hopeless by violence, rape and captivity.

I want to stop and remember these people, before moving so quickly into the Spanish and Mexican and Texan histories of this region.

The archaeological record shows the people of the Rio Grande delta trading with other peoples as far south as what is today central Mexico and with people as far north as present-day Wyoming. But what do shell beads and obsidian points tell us about people? I wonder about the women in particular: what stories did they tell? who and what was holy to them? how did they dance? when did they sing? how did they like their fish cooked?

I can move into a meditation of remembrance. The only part of South Texas where my recollections remotely match the pristine conditions of pre-contact Rio Grande delta area is South Padre Island. I can remember mornings on the island, watching the sun come up over sandy green surf, turning the water and sand gold, with no buildings in sight and only crying gulls for company. I can go into that memory, and let vision rise.

In this vision, far up the beach a band of people is walking away from me; the thin edges of a walking song comes along the wind to where I sit, watching. They begin to disappear, one by one, as though erased by a mirage on the horizon. But the disappearance is no mirage; I hold each vanishing figure in my heart as long as I can, straining to hear the song of life.

As I grieve what has been lost, in a devastated landscape and decimated peoplescape, I am helped to remember that not all American Indians are gone, and that mythologizing a living people is just another form of romantic oppression. It is important to see who and what is, today.

I am fortunate to witness the work of American Indians such as Peggy Larney, working in Dallas schools and churches and activist groups; to have been challenged by the words and wisdom of theologian Andrea Smith (Cherokee); to have been inspired by the leadership of Harley Eagle (Lakota). In a recent email, Harley commented on his own learnings about the history of South Texas and its indigenous peoples: "A people with a direct, spiritual relationship to the land, with a language that held the secrets and mimicked the rhythms of the land and the importance of relationships to all things is no more. That is what breaks my heart along with all the atrocities you mentioned."

It hurts to let the historical truths pass through, searing one's heart and mind. But these truths, too, will set us free. Let us open our eyes to see the dreams of justice alive before us today, for which we can all work.

Jesus, the "Illegal"

The Christmas season drowns us in sentimental stories we've heard too many times. We've chewed the stories over like cud until they've lost all flavor, all meaning. And yet, there are parts of the story we often miss, or miss the significance of until it's pointed out to us. Last year an essay in SMU's journal Apuntes explored the journey that Joseph and Mary took after Jesus' birth, fleeing to Egypt in order to escape Herod's murderous intent to kill the newborn king of the Jews. In almost their first act as new parents, Joseph and Mary became political refugees, immigrants, aliens in Egypt.

Now, when I hear a phrase like "They picked up a bunch of illegals and deported them," I think about Jesus. Prince of Peace, Wonderful, Counselor ... Illegal. It doesn't quite fit, does it. And yet it does. This kind of shock is exactly what the Jews of the first century experienced, trying to understand that the Messiah had come, and not on a tall white horse, not into a high priest's house, but into a barn and then on the run from political persecution.

I thought about Jesus the Illegal again this week, when along with other members of a Dallas anti-racism team I visited the office where Catholic Charities provides immigration counseling to people who want to change their documentation status by applying for a green card or for citizenship. The applicants and the counselors are up against a herculean task; the logistics required are daunting.

Many of us have opinions about immigration, particularly about people who come into the United States without the proper documentation. My own opinion is shaped by several factors. I remember as a child growing up in South Texas, when a white or green van would drive up our country road, some of the people on our farm became scarce, as cries of "la migra!" went up. I remember my father explaining to me that if one of those vans ever came up our long driveway, I was to come find him, and if no one else was home, to not let them in the house. I did not understand everything about this reality when I was a child, but I knew I loved the people who were at risk, and knew that I would do a child's best (probably under romantic illusions fed by The Diary of Anne Frank).

As an adult, my opinion is shaped by other stories. I co-pastored a church here in Dallas for several years with Esther Martinez (now Esther Vasquez), and I remember her story of having to carry proof of citizenship when she was growing up, even though she was born here. I was saddened to think this had happened in my lifetime, in my state, but the truth is it's happening again. Amid the anti-immigrant hysteria currently sweeping our state and our nation, people who were born here, and whose families have lived here for generations, are being treated suspiciously.

These human beings are treated as illegal border-crossers, even though the truth is these are a people who have been crossed by the border. In the space of a couple of decades, Mexican citizens suddenly became subject to and citizens of the Republic of Texas, and then of the United States, once it annexed Texas. Such clean apolitical words; they hide the war dead, the disputes over the location of the Texas border, the questions of land tenure and ownership. I remember, too, the pain of reading Gloria Anzaldua's language describing the border as un herida abierta, an open wound where the so-called First World of the United States scrapes against the so-called Third World of Mexico.

James Baldwin wrote of the need for white people to "do our first works over." Surely, in writing this dissertation, if it is to be an anti-racist theology, one of the first works I must do over is to understand where I come from. The "borderlands" has become a hot property, not only in the real estate market but also in theological circles, so there is no shortage of theological interpretation of borders and bordered identities. But there is something particular for me to learn, in looking at the land where I grew up, that I must know before I can write this theology. I am looking for those particulars. And they are finding me.

One other story before I close this post, a story of two texts, both from Leviticus. Many Christians, political conservatives in particular, are familiar with Leviticus 18:22: "You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination." (The "you" here is gendered male in the Hebrew.) I'll address the homophobia and heterosexism that have derived from the "hammer texts" as we go along, but for now I just want to ask this question.

How many of us give equal weight -- and political energy -- to Leviticus 19:33-34? "When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God."

What would our immigration policy look like if we loved the alien as ourselves? If we remembered what God remembers, that each of us is the child of an alien people? If we remembered that that cute baby Jesus in the manger is the incarnation of the Creator of the Universe, who chose to enter into a life that would include illegal immigration?

There are no illegal human beings. Some human beings are in our neighborhoods without legal documentation. The lack of that piece of paper doesn't excuse us from God's invitation, God's commandment to love the neighbor as ourselves. I'll be thinking some more about what that means in my life.

Beginnings are such tender things ...

It seems to be a principle of starting a new thing that you have to be willing to suck at it. Anything worth doing is worth doing badly in the beginning. So far, this has applied to roller-skating, dancing, golf, parenting, partnering, and the Guitar/Dissertation.

Yes. Guitar/Dissertation.

See, I was a little nervous about starting to write something that's supposed to end up around 300 (bazillion) pages. So I decided to start learning to play the guitar at the same time. That way, when I got tired of sucking at the dissertation, I could go suck at guitar.

(This is sort of like the year I learned Greek and Hebrew. At the same time. Two new alphabets, two foreign languages, one year, and a whole lotta flash cards. Kept me out of trouble.)

The Guitar/Dissertation ruse worked. Sort of like the penguin in Happy Feet that tricks himself into falling off the cliff that his buddies have just slalomed down. (Yes, I was annoyed that the movie used Robin Williams for a Latino pinguino; why not just use a Latino actor, as appears to be the case for the other pinguinos? At least the Latino pinguinos were the coolest, as opposed to the Spanish-accented villains that Disney usually puts up ....) Somewhere between the D and G7 chords, suddenly I was Writing the Dissertation, and I didn't even mind that it wasn't my best writing. It was a whole lot better than my guitar playing.

Trying to be a white anti-racist is a lot the same ... you have to be willing to do it badly because you just so much want to be doing it and being it at all, and you are going to be bad at it, especially in the beginning. (But that's okay, because perfectionism is one of the things that you get to pitch along the way ... and that's helpful in all kinds of ways.)

Even when you have been at it for awhile, there are still so many times you are not sure what to be, or say, or do ... and for that, we have another saying: "Feel the fear and do it anyway." That's not a license to be stupid, or uncaring: it's what you say when commitment runs up against ambiguity; while the outcome may not be clear, the community's calling to you is.

So, if you are teetering on the edge of the cliff of trying to do something about racism, here are some ways to trick yourself into beginning. Study your ethnicity's history. Read up on and really look at the geography and politics of the place you came from, and where you are now. Try to see who benefits from your decisions and your spending; then look at what people groups benefit from your community's/state's/federal government's decisions and spending. Listen to the leadership of communities of color (you can start by Googling MALDEF and NAACP and American Indian Heritage Foundation). See what's happening locally. Look and listen for a couple of years, and see what you think then.

Oh, and don't forget to pray. Ask God if there's something it would be good for you to see, know, be, understand ... the surprise will come.

Remember. It's not like you have to be good at it to start. We are not asked to be perfectionists; we are asked to be lovers.

Truer Colors?

I went for a hike Sunday at Cedar Ridge Preserve, a local Audubon Dallas-managed slice of Texas Hill Country, alight this day with our version of fall color. Among evergreen juniper and shaggy cedar, the oaks and sumac and elms were a riot in their bright yellows and oranges, reds and purples. What's amazing is that these colors have been there all along, just waiting for their chance to glow.

As naturalist Janet Lembke explains in her book Shake Them 'Simmons Down, "The colors seen in fall have always been present in the leaves, ever since they began to unfold. The yellow pigment, carotene, and the pigment for deep reds and purples, anthocyanin, lie beneath the green chlorophyll." Chlorophyll, we all know from junior high science, is key to the photosynthetic process whereby the tree generates energy. But, in the fall, as the weather cools, the tree begins to shut that process down and, as Lembke explains, "the connections of leaf stems to tree are sealed off. Deprived of its own supply of water, the chlorophyll disappears. And the underlying colors blaze."

Which reminds me of another writer on the oddities of chlorophyll. Annie Dillard writes in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek that "If you analyze a molecule of chlorophyll itself, what you get is one hundred thirty-six atoms of hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen arranged in an exact and complex relationship around a central ring. At the ring's center is a single atom of magnesium. Now: If you remove the atom of magnesium and in its exact place put an atom of iron, you get a molecule of hemoglobin. The iron atom combines with all the other atoms to make red blood ...."

So what?

Well. It makes me wonder if there is an autumnal effect for we humans, particularly those of us carrying white-skin privilege. (See link for a primer or Google "Peggy McIntosh" and "white privilege".) What is the equivalent for us, of chlorophyll dropping out of the leaves, and revealing our truer colors, the ones that have been there all along? Beneath the overwhelming wash of white -- so omnipresent to most of us white folks we don't even know we are swimming in it -- do we have truer colors? And if so, what are they?

My guesses would be the colors of deep awareness ... spookily brilliant insight ... oceanic compassion ... bright laughter ... and love. Passionate, shameless, let-righteousness-and-peace-kiss kind of love. (Psalm 85:10.)

What else? Is there anything hiding under your white skin, or the white skin of those you care about? What else could we see, if we weren't blinded by the white?

Of course, if our truer colors are revealed by some alchemical awakening, that doesn't mean we stop being white. It just means we are becoming truer, perhaps, to a wider and deeper sense of what it means to live in and through God's love.

I will always be white; I will always be handed white-skin privilege as long as there is such a thing. But it is also true that I will always be looking for my truer colors, too, the ones I feel burning in my heart.

Happy New Year!

No, not that new year. Advent ... the beginning of a new year in the church calendar. Officially it's the four Sundays leading up to Christmas: four themes (hope, love, joy, peace), four candles (well, five counting the Christ candle to be lit on Christmas day), a wreath for the candles, special colors (lots of purple, but you can have blue and gray and mauve is the big color for the third Sunday of Advent: rejoice!). Great stuff for church geeks stuck between the First Coming and the Second Coming. (Ever seen that great coffee mug? Perennial favorite of church secretaries, it says "Jesus is coming soon" on one side and "Look busy!" on the other. Too right.)

I love Advent, not least because of the purple and the candles, but also because it celebrates waiting and in-betweenness, which is what my life seems to be about these days. Waiting for the kids to grow up, waiting for my best beloved to find a job here so we can live in the same zip code, waiting to finish the Ph.D., waiting to get a real job again.

Of course, that's the thing about waiting. If you are not working your ass off about whatever it is you are waiting for, you will probably spend the rest of your life waiting. Advent reminds us waiting is active -- like the belly of a woman in her ninth month, there is a lot going on and plenty to do. And still ... the wait goes on, right alongside the work.

Advent is about "already" and "not-yet" ... Jesus has already been born, and we are already celebrating the reality of God-with-us, God-with-skin-on, and yet we have not yet lived into the fullness of what Jesus showed us the first time around: what love really looks like.

So, while we "wait" to live into the reality of God's idea of love, what is the work? For me, at long last, it is to try -- as my old preaching professor Joey Jeter used to say -- to say a good word for Jesus. In my case -- God help me -- to write a dissertation. I have waited and worked a long time to get to this point: 60 hours of graduate coursework, two language exams, four qualifying exams, four field exams, a dissertation proposal, student teaching ... and now, to write.

To try to say a good word for what love looks like, in the days of waiting and working.

First Things First

Welcome to TrueColors, the story of a dissertation. (More about that later.) I've been working on a Ph.D. in systematic theology since 2004, and now at long last it's time to write the dissertation. This blog might serve a couple of purposes: it might let people who are curious see what this dissertation is ending up being about; it might let me test ideas with real human beings as I am going along; it might let curious voyeurs see into one woman's writing (and theologizing) process. And it will provide another avenue of accountability, a term which will get more play as we go along.

Thanks for stopping by. I'm glad you're here.