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Donna's avatar

That was beautiful. We’re standing at an important crossroads. Or maybe the razor’s edge. Recognizing that even at our worst , we all, everyone, is operating in a system that has never served our humanity, and we are all trapped in it; that’s how we can go forward together. “Every path is the right path. Everything could've been anything else. And it would have just as much meaning.”

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Marilyn Langlois's avatar

Thank you for this brilliant analysis and for sharing the important insights offered by Fredrick Douglas and his admiration for the values and principles expressed in the US constitution, even if they have been too often subverted, i.e., the fact that the evil institution of slavery was never condoned by this document.

Have you done an analysis of how Ben Franklin or any other founding fathers who promoted liberty, sovereignty and self-determination may have attempted to integrate these principles in their approach to relations with the nations of indigenous peoples who already inhabited the land that later became the United States? We know about the damage done by colonist and imperialist forces, but were there ever efforts by anyone to ask permission to co-inhabit the land and collaborate with mutual respect on sharing/exhanging resources and cultural assets? What role did the Iroquois confederacy play and what happened to that connection? Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz addresses often ignored realities of rampant land theft, ethnic cleansing and genocide in her book "An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States" that haunt us still today. Addressing this aspect of our history honestly and with humility needs to be a part of figuring out how to identify and build upon the positive and constructive innovations that the US brought forth, doesn't it? I'd greatly appreciate your thoughts and any references to work you or your colleagues have done in this area. Thanks again!

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