To the editor:
I write to you as an Indian — or as whites know us, a so-called Maliseet Indian. This is in response to your article on ancestors which appeared in the Aroostook Republican on March 4, 2015. I thought that you might be interested in my story and the story of my ancestors.
The invitation to Indians to attend the white invaders’ thanksgiving was done with ulterior motives. To kill the savage, heathen Indian which is what happened. There are also some other violent happenings that your ancestors chose not to tell their children. In the three years that your ancestors waited for more provisions from their home my ancestors taught them how to plant and hunt for food in addition to showing them how to make clothing and footwear from animal hides.
My people have lived here in our beloved Turtle Island for some 20,000 years. For so long that we are taught that our people were planted here just like the trees, the rivers and just like our sacred Mount Katahdin. The history of the landmass known as America did not begin with the arrival of the white European invaders in 1492.
You may wish to better acquaint yourself with the true history of your peoples’ arrival to our homeland and if so you may wish to read such books as: “American Holocaust – the Conquest of the New World” by David Stannard; “A People’s History of the United States 1492- Present” by Howard Zinn; “Indian Country” by Peter Matthiessen; “A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the America’s 1492 to the Present” by Ward Churchill; and “The Heart of Whiteness, Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege” by Robert Jensen.
My responsibility as a Spiritual Medicine Elder is to teach and to share the sacred way of The Ancestors, The People and The Seventh Generation. From our lodge to yours we send you light, love, peace and harmony.
Dan Ennis, O.I.M.
Caribou
