Uneasy inheritance; trail of death
by Rich Meyer, Millersburg Ind.
I was moved by the reflection of Marty and Marilyn Lehman on how they relate, as descendants of early settlers, to the story of dispossession and forced removal of the Potawatomi from Indiana (Leadership, December 2011).
I noticed a few years ago that, just like the seventh-grade history class of their youth, most articles on early Amish/Mennonite settlements in Mennonite publications began at the point where Europeans enter the picture.
In order to be able to tell more of the story, I suggest that all of us not indigenous to this land should be able to answer three basic questions about our homes: (1) Whose land was it before European conquest/settlement? (2) How did those people lose it?( 3) Where are their descendants today?
Marty and Marilyn answered the first two questions well in their article; the significance of the third question is that it opens us to our relationship with those descendants today—in many cases a neglected relationship but a relationship nonetheless. Only when we recognize this can we take steps to work on that relationship. And it is this, the relationship today, that I have found transforming.
Associated Issue: Mary, model and mother? - December 2012
Associated Article: Uneasy inheritance: the Trail of Death
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