It is a strange feeling to be born and raised on stolen land. I have lived all my life in Haudenosaunee territory. Before it was held by them, it was held by their ancestors, the Owasco. Those lands were ceded in the 1784 Treaty of Fort Stanwix, ratified by the United States in 1785, though never officially ratified by the Six Nations. This information wasn’t available to me at the school on the hill, where we began every day by pledging ‘liberty and justice for all.’ This information was not sent to me from on high; I sought it myself. It’s ironic that only now, after I’ve left my home, do I learn who it belongs to. 

 I was inspired to educate myself by an event held by the Clean Air Party of Buffalo in collaboration with Nekanęhsakt: friends of Ękwehęwę, a mixed group of concerned folks standing up for environmental and indigenous issues. Nekanęhsakt translates to “two houses standing together” and Ękwehęwę translates to “real human beings”. The event was hosted in the historic Trinity Episcopal Church in Buffalo. We were well fed and given the opportunity to sample indigenous foods. In addition to the fry bread and corn soup provided by the community, we also had pizza, salad, and dietary-restriction-friendly options.

The KAIROS blanket activity is an interactive history designed to foster cultural understanding and appreciation. It is made to give better shape to the atrocities endured by indigenous Americans. The activity’s premise is simple. Blankets are laid out on the floor in the middle of a ring of chairs to represent North America, Turtle Island. Participants are asked to forget their identities and imagine that they are native to this land of clean water and plenty. Facilitators take on the role of settlers and narrators. Almost every participant is given a ribbon, whose color denotes tribal affiliation or lack thereof. My ribbon was green; I was not given a territory to occupy but told to walk around the land until I found somewhere that called me. After we had all taken our places, the facilitators began to recite a cruel and grueling history. First contact, initial exchanges and trade. Then land encroachments. A facilitator handed a military-issue wool blanket to a participant and said that the blanket was infected, and he would represent the indigenous lives lost to the spread of disease. Some were killed by chance; others were given infected blankets just like the one he held. With every treaty signed, the facilitators kicked and folded back the blankets we stood on. When the facilitators picked up the blanket you were standing on, you would return to your seat in the circle. When settlers take the land you live on, you flee or die. As the exercise progressed, treaties turned into conflicts and then massacres. President Jackson’s dream that all indigenous peoples be pushed out of sight in the west became an impossibility when the United States’ lust for expansion consumed the frontier. The swath of blankets we began the exercise on had been winnowed down to a few scraps of fabric. A few of those who remained standing and I were told to move to a blanket in the corner. We represented the indigenous children kidnapped and sent to boarding schools where they died at higher rates than front-line soldiers due to rampant disease, poor living conditions and vicious discipline. And of course, that figure only encompasses reported deaths. Of the half dozen of us who were taken to the corner, only one returned home. In the end, the crowd of standing people had been reduced to a handful, and the room was quiet.  

After the activity concluded, we divided into small discussion groups. I was grouped with five others, all of whom would prove remarkable examples of the type of adult I hope to become. In the face of a tragedy that had just proved my education omitted a lot, I was boggled. The numbers, the sheer scale of violence, wouldn’t sit right in my head. And there was no justification. Just land, just expansion. An entire civilization was raped. Blood for acres. I expressed my anger and sorrow, and the group reciprocated. We shared how guilty we felt prospering here, and how useless that guilt is. I learned about their individual work, spanning from boots-on-the-ground oil pipeline protests to anti-genocide organizations to co-founding Burning Books, a local radical bookstore. I learned that these people who felt what I felt had careers I had never dreamed of and impacts I didn’t know one person could have. I met an incredible woman who shares my name. She told me that I don’t have to do anything big, just go around planting seeds, as she does. As our conversation progressed, I realized she had planted a seed in me. Despite the tragic history we came there to honor, I left feeling light. People out there care about what I care about, and people out there care about things I don’t know I should care about yet. This event gave me hope, because even if guilt is useless, the empathy behind the guilt is not.