We Will Defend Ourselves
And our communities
Boozhoo, indinawemaaganidog! Aaniin! That is to say hello, all of my relatives! Welcome to another edition of An Irritable Métis. I probably could have spent more time organizing my thoughts on this one but I hope you’ll bear with me. It’s pretty stream of consciousness with even less editing than usual but I wanted to share it anyway. I carry a lot of conflicting emotions concerning this past weekend, and if I wrote this piece again in a couple days it might be different … but not too much.
I appreciate your time here. I mentioned last time that I started a “buy me a coffee” thing for those of you compelled not to subsidize Substack. So many of you contributed and I’m surprised and deeply moved. I’ll be responding to each of you soon. As for anyone else who wants to begin a migration from this hellmouth and still want to support my work here, while it remains here, you too may pitch in HERE, if you are so inclined. I’m eternally grateful.
I’m curious to know how many Irritable Readers attended a No Kings protest last weekend. I’m sure many of you did; by all accounts the day was wildly successful. The No Kings website reports breathlessly:
In the largest single-day nationwide demonstrations in U.S. history, at least 8 million people gathered today at more than 3,300 events across all 50 states, and almost every continent. The third No Kings saw more than one million more attendees and 600 more events than the October mobilization.
That’s quite a display of disagreement, I’d say. Of resistance, perhaps? We even rose to the occasion in Montana, where protests were generally larger than what we’d seen before. I think that’s pretty excellent. It’s beyond excellent, particularly in towns like Fort Benton or Hamilton or Miles City, where you wouldn’t expect it. Given what I’ve seen from those communities though, I shouldn’t be surprised. There are excellent people in every nook and cranny of this state. I’ve met so many of them personally over the last couple years.
I was in Helena as a speaker. It was kind of a weird situation. The folks from Indivisible Helena, who organized the capital of Montana’s edition of the event, had contacted me several weeks ago about speaking at an event they were putting together. At the time I didn’t know it was part of a greater No Kings thing. I said yes, I’d be happy to. Then I was contacted by the organizers in Missoula to speak the same day at their No Kings event and I realized my predicament. After some back and forth trying to swap locations I agreed to honor my commitment in Helena because they expressed quite an eagerness to have me and I was happy to make the round trip. It was a beautiful day to drive!
I don’t want to sound ungrateful at the invitation to speak because I recognize it as as an honor but I almost bailed on it the night before when I saw what the event would include. With former Montana state governor Steve Bullock also on the bill I thought the organizers’ insistence about how important my presence was to them felt a bit hollow. Then I saw there would be an intoning of the pledge of allegiance. That’s the thing that pert near pushed me over the edge. I hate that freakin’ pledge with more vigor than I do land acknowledgements and I felt its inclusion felt a little tone deaf, particularly that abominable “under god” line.1 I actually lost most of the prior night’s sleep tossing and turning over speaking because I was wondering if by doing so I was agreeing to something not for me.2
When the time came to speak I made my own silent little protest unknown to anyone but me. Rather than speak from the lectern, positioned dramatically between a Montana state flag and an American flag, I dragged a mic off a stand stage-side for the group of wonderful singers who’d just performed. I don’t like lecterns anyway.
A line from the event website reads, “We will defend ourselves and our communities against this administration’s unjust and cruel acts of violence.” That’s fine and I get it. I’m all for it! Let’s just be clear what that means. I’m reminded of this quote from Robin Wall Kimmerer: “Transformation is not accomplished by tentative wading at the edge.” The entire system does need transformed! The general vibe of the protest felt something akin to, “If we can only get rid of this administration then everything will be okay again.” And for many of our communities engaged in these efforts, the USA and everything the flag represents – and there were so many flags, with more being handed out to people to wave – has never been okay. I really struggled to get my feet under me. Transformation is necessary. Anything else is simply wading at the edge. I want to defend everyone’s community. And I want help defending mine.
And yet … maybe this is transformation? Maybe this is a sign of more people wading farther out from the edge? I didn’t see, or feel, that in Helena – I did feel abundant joy and solidarity of a certain kind, which was uplifting – but as a national movement? Writing for Jacobin, Ben Burgis writes:
Anyone on the socialist left3 who thinks the fight against Trump’s authoritarianism isn’t our fight because it merely pits liberals against conservatives is very deeply missing the point. Liberal capitalist democracy is profoundly flawed, and its promises are destined to go unfulfilled. But as workers’ movements have always understood, it’s a good starting point for the struggle for something better.
I’m also inclined to agree that “as a first step in building the energy and momentum that are necessary conditions for any other form of political action”, these protests are absolutely a giant stride in the right direction. I talk all the time about the long game necessity of the efforts in all of our social movements. None of this is going to change as quickly as it needs to and, frankly, I don’t know that it can before climate disruption collapses the whole shebang. Additionally, if all goes well, I’ll only be alive for maybe three or four more presidential elections, and I don’t see the Democrats – the only real “opposition” party in the hearts and minds of the vast majority of people attending these rallies – demonstrating a willingness to provide much of an alternative to business as usual. In order to show people that “business as usual” is just another kind of the same failure, these huge collective efforts are necessary. At least I think they are. I don’t want to be one of those smartasses sitting on the sidelines pointing out flaws without making an effort to participate in providing an alternative.
“If your freedom is built on the denial of freedom to others, then you didn’t actually have freedom at all. You had privilege.”
— Chief Derek Nepinak, Pine Creek First Nation
My hope is, moving forward, more people will understand that there is nothing in American democracy we need to be trying to “return” to. We need to work together to create something new, become a new people, to have any hope of any kind of future for any of us.
Amusingly, as I was writing just now I received an email concerning the upcoming 10th anniversary of Red May Seattle. I moderated a couple panels for PM Press in 2021 when they published Red Nation Rising: From Bordertown Violence to Native Liberation. Which helps me remember that no matter how vigorously these petty power mongers stomp around trying to squash resistance to their evil tyranny, more fires continue to burn. I love that.
I don’t know the point of all this rambling. I guess it’s this: I look with side-eye and a bit of suspicion toward things like No Kings because too often they seem a performance toward real change rather than the real thing. Except for when they haven’t been, and there are plenty of examples of that too. Maybe this one is one of the latter. I’m going to assume that is the case and remain all in. I’m going to keep showing up in all the ways I can. I hope you do too. It’s literally the future of the world that is at stake, isn’t it?
Oh, and One More Thing
This is my favorite photo. Also an Eric Heidl thing. This is me and Dan Pocha4, one of our Little Shell elders. Look closely and you’ll see he appears to be holding a joint. It’s not! It’s a tiny little braid of sweetgrass, because he understood I would probably need a smudge. And I did.
I pretty much said as much during my speech too when I essentially asked whose god we’re supposed to be “under” given what the particular god of the people who insisted on adding that line represents. What I failed to say, after the guy who led the pledge made a speech about the Americans killed so far in Iraq, was that I am absolutely in equal solidarity with the people digging through the rubble created by American-made or American-supplied munitions in places all over the world to see if they have any surviving family members as I am any dead American service people who volunteered to potentially murder innocents on behalf of anyone running the show in the USA. I don’t care about American lives any more, or less, than I do anyone else in the world.
Friends, these things generally don’t feel like they are meant to include Native people. We are largely eliminated from the discussion. Nor do we really attend – if 7% of the Montana population is Indigenous, there should have been at least 70 of us there, and I don’t know that I saw more than two or three. Which is understandable considering, as I also pointed out in my talk, that that same flag everyone was waving so vigorously was carried by people chasing our ancestors around and shooting guns just a couple generations ago.
Of which I absolutely am.
Dan and I spoke to the entire Helena Middle School together a couple years ago. 600+ kids. Dan said growing up Métis, he was the only kid who could “play cowboys and Indians with myself.” I still chortle and snort when I think about that, even if I’m the only one in the room who got it.
I went to the Missoula event, my third. Because you said the right thing to do is "show up in service to humanity." I showed up. Imperfect and staid as these gatherings are to me, if one more person had the personal courage to attend for the first time, it was worth it to me to support that. We need to create a new system, not feel relief if the democrats win congress in November. Whites will still get to define the game. The "revolution" still needs to happen.
Good for you to stand up in those trying circumstances.
I did attend the NKs rally in Boise. I, too, was mighty impressed by the bravery of many who came out in the little rural communities that dot Idaho’s map.
There’s a lot I don’t agree with at these things. And chants are absolutely not my thing. But I think it is important to set aside some of our personal misgivings for the sake of unity. And—if we can come together to resist the current chaos that thinks of itself as an administration, perhaps we can later hear each other on the other issues as well.
I remember that the Vietnam War seemed slated to go on forever until the masses came out to join the hippies and college kids in protest. Or that’s how I remember it anyway. I’m sure there were other things going on. But unified public pressure surely helped turn the tide.